Uppala Madhavi, mother of Uppala Amarnath, 15, who was burnt alive allegedly by miscreants who poured petrol on him and set him on fire on June 16 morning, at Rajolu village in Cherukupalli mandal, has demanded either capital punishment or life imprisonment to the accused persons responsible for her son’s murder.
Speaking to The Hindu at her house here, Ms. Madhavi claimed that she was striving to educate her children since her husband’s death 14 years back. Her daughter studying Intermediate goes to college in Cherukupalli, while her son was studying tenth standard in a school in Rajolu. Both of them had to pass through Rajolu, where the accused, Pamu Venkateswara Reddy, resided. Though the accused had been harassing her 17-year-old daughter for long time, they came to know about it in the recent past, she said.
“About a couple of months back, Amarnath objected to Venkateswara Reddy’s behaviour and warned him not to harass my daughter. At that time, the accused took Amaranath to some place in an autorickshaw, beat him up and threw him on the street,” she alleged. After that the family informed about the incident to the accused’s father, Sambi Reddy, and told them that they would be held responsible for anything that would happen to her childen, Ms. Madhavi said.
She alleged that a day before the incident, the accused hit Amarnath with a stone injuring him on the leg when the boy was going for tuition. “My son told us he fell from the bicycle and was injured,” she said.
She alleged that on Friday morning, when Amarnath, who was going to tuition reached Rajolu, Venkateswara Reddy along with three others stopped Amarnath. They beat him up, dragged him to a nearby place, covered him with a tarpaulin sheet, poured petrol and set him afire, She alleged. “As my son started screaming, some people from Rajolu village observed the incident and informed us. We rushed to the spot. By the time we reached, he was almost burnt. We shifted him in am ambulance to the Government General Hospital in Guntur. When we asked who did it, Amarnath said that it was P. Venkateswara Reddy,” Ms. Madhavi claimed.
She said that she wanted justice in the form of either capital punishment or life imprisonment to the accused.
