Chandrababu Naidu on daylong fast against AP firing

Naidu reached Indira Park this morning and undertook the fast alongwith several MPs, members of legislative assembly and council (MLAs and MLCs) of his party. In a letter to the prime minister, he had demanded Dr Singh to visit Mudigonda village to console the families of the police firing victims.

"This gruesome tragedy of brutal killing of innocent people (at Mudigonda) reminds us of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. On 13th April 1919, General Dyer ordered the massacre of men, women and children gathered in Jallianwala Bagh. It was like shooting rats caught in a trap," Naidu had stated in his letter.

He claimed that the police suddenly descended on Mudigonda and started firing indiscriminately with AK-47 rifles and self-loading rifles on the crowd without any warning. During the last three years, the Congress government had resorted to indiscriminate firing at five places resulting in the death of 23 persons.

Naidu demanded the prime minister to ask the chief minister to step down forthwith owning moral responsibility. He also wanted a judicial inquiry into the Mudigonda police firing by a sitting judge of the high court.

Meanwhile, scores of leaders and activists of the nine Left parties, including CPI-M and CPI, took out a rally from the Old MLA Quarters at Hyderguda to make a representation to the Prime Minister who was holding a review meeting with the state government officials at Jubilee Hall.

The police, however, did not allow the rally to proceed towards the venue, which is just one km away from the old MLA quarters.

The Left leaders said that they wanted to meet the Prime Minister and submit a memorandum detailing Mudigonda police firing in which six persons were killed and eight others injured. They also wanted to voice their demands for resolving the 'lands issue'.