Various officials of the Andhra Pradesh government, Andhra Police, starting with Chief Minister Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy have accused the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) of being the core conspirators behind temple-related vandalism incidents in the state. The state police revealed that TDP members paid the temple priest to desecrate the Subramanya Swamy idol.
The Chief Minister went onto put out a list of nine such temple-related incidents which were strategically executed around launches of important government schemes with an intention to sabotage the same. One of the nine listed by CM Jaganmohan Reddy was the desecration of a Subramanya Swamy idol in Rajahmahendravaram. On 31 December 2020, while the government was still in the process of distributing the 30 lakh house pattas that was due, under its flagship housing scheme, both hands of a Subramanya Swamy idol were demolished in Rajahmahendravaram.
The local police dispatched eight different teams to investigate the matter after registering an FIR against ‘unknown assailants’. The investigation revealed that it was none other than the temple’s priest Venkata Murali Krishna who desecrated the idol in return for money offered by two known members of the TDP. M. Venkata Raju, husband of a former TDP corporator, and Dantuluri Venkatapati Raju, who is a former organising secretary of TNTUC (an affiliated division of TDP), were therefore arrested by the police along with the priest on 31 January 2021.
Accused with known links to a particular political outfit, actively participating in the desecration of Hindu idols and the consequential propaganda run against the government by using images of idols on social media, has exposed the mala fide and alarming intent of TDP’s leadership, besides proving what the government has been reiterating time and again.