Eighteen-year-old Palvai Harish Babu, a budding medico, just got up to start his day when the landline phone rang in the modest Sirsilk Mills Officers quarters in the industrial town of Kagaznagar in Kumaram Bhim Asifabad district (then Adilabad), about 280 km from Hyderabad on September 15, 1999.
The caller on the other side broke the shocking news that his father, Palvai Purshotham Rao, a three-time MLA, had been shot by People’s War Group naxalites in his Praja Karyalayamu (People’s office). Harish ran out of the house even as his wailing mother and others tried to find out what was happening. By the time he reached Dr. Madhu’s Hospital on the Railway Station Road in Kagaznagar, he saw his father’s bullet-riddled body. Not only his father but three of his gunmen were also gunned down by the naxalites.
Elections to the Andhra Pradesh Assembly were just three days away in 1999 when the killing of the soft-spoken Purshotham Rao, popularly called the ‘Prajala Manishi’ (People’s man), sent shock waves through the entire Andhra Pradesh. Till 1989, Purshotham Rao was an Independent MLA and chose to contest the 1999 election on Telugu Desam Party ticket.
