Hyderabad, Nov 07: In a macabre turn to the ongoing war between Naxalites and police in Andhra Pradesh, the People's War Group shot dead a Naxalite-turned-police informer even as a civil rights leader was abducted by a little-known anti-Naxalite organisation from the heart of the city late last night. The bullet-ridden body of Siraj alias Azad, who had worked as a deputy commander of PWG before turning into a covert operator, was found on a road in Guntur district this morning, police said here.
The killing of the renegade Naxalite, who was in PWG captivity for several weeks, came three days after the outlawed outfit had produced him, with hands and legs tied-up, before a select group of journalists in Nallamala forest area and made him confess that he had colluded with police in eliminating some of the PWG leaders.
Demanding his release, a group of activists calling themselves 'Tirumala Tigers' kidnapped the president of Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee (APCLC) Dr G Lakshman, an assistant professor in Commerce Department of Osmania University, from Tarnaka area here late last night.
The abduction, dubbed by the civil rights groups as a 'police-sponsored operation', has sent shock waves in the city.
On hearing the news of the kidnapping, chief minister n Chandrababu Naidu summoned Home Minister T Devender Goud, DGP S R Sukumara and other top police officials and ordered constitution of special teams to trace the abducted civil rights leader.
Bureau Report