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Ex-BJP leader who thrashed two Dalit men in Telangana arrested
Bharat Reddy, a local BJP leader of Abhangapatnam village in Navipet block, was picked up from his hideout in Hyderabad.
Police from Telangana’s Nizamabad district arrested a former Bharatiya Janata Party leader on Monday, a month after he was booked for beating up two Dalit men and forcing them to take a dip in dirty waters, from Hyderabad.
Bharat Reddy, a local BJP leader of Abhangapatnam village in Navipet block, was picked up from his hideout in Hyderabad and would be produced before the court later in the day, the police said.
The incident happened at Abhangapatnam in September but was highlighted on November 12 after a video clip of the incident went viral on various social media groups in the state.
The Nizamabad rural police filed a case against Reddy, BJP’s former district general secretary, following a complaint from a local Dalit leader under the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
The state BJP later disowned him, saying he was suspended from the party long ago.
The video clip showed Reddy “punishing” the two Dalits – Kondra Lakshman and Rajeshwar – for questioning illegal quarrying of gravel from the nearby fields at Errakunta pond without government permission. He was seen caning the two men with a stick and hurling abuses in filthy language.
He does not heed to their pleas begging for mercy and forces them to enter a muddy pool on the roadside. When one of them tries to tell him what he was doing was wrong as he did not have permission, the BJP leader scolds him and threatens to beat him up.
The incident was recorded on a mobile phone by one of his followers and Reddy himself was seen shooting the Dalits taking a dip in the dirty waters.
Reddy went absconding soon after the police registered a case against him and the two Dalit victims, too, went missing. The family members of the men lodged a complaint with the police alleging that Reddy had abducted them.
Several Dalit organisations and political parties also protested and staged demonstrations in Nizamabad demanding that Reddy be arrested and the victims be rescued.
Lakshman and Rajeshwar appeared on a local television news channel in Hyderabad a couple of weeks ago and said they had not been kidnapped but had come to the state capital to look for work.
They added that Reddy only made them participate in a shooting for a film Dorala Rajyam (Rule of Landlords) being made by the former BJP leader and that they were not humiliated.
However, the men changed their statements after returning home and told the police that Reddy had kidnapped them.
“We were threatened to tell the media that it was part of film shooting,” Lakshman and Rajeshwar said.
Following their statements, National Commission for Scheduled Castes’ member K Ramulu visited Abhangapatnam on Saturday and asked the authorities to take stern action against Reddy.
