WARANGAL: At around 4.30 am IST on Sunday, M Sanjeeva Reddy received a phone call from California. The caller on the other side was Praveen, his son Mamidala Vamsi Chander Reddy’s friend. Little did Sanjeeva Reddy know that what the caller would tell him will bring his world crashing down. While he was reluctant to believe that he had lost the most precious thing in his life, his son, the loss was clearly visible on his face.
Sanjeeva Reddy’s greatest fear was breaking the news to his wife Rama. As soon as she heard about the news of her son’s death, Rama went silent. It was with great difficulty that the family members could make her cry. “I spoke to him two days ago and he told me that he was trying to get a job. I asked him to come back if he is unable to find a suitable job. Now, we get to hear this. All our dreams have been shattered,” the devastated father said.
Misfortune befell the family at a time when they were planning to get Vamsi married. “We had plans to get him married this year. We would have started looking for a suitable bride for him. Everything is lost now. Our life will never be the same again,” he said. Blaming the US government for his son’s death, Sanjeev said that he failed to understand why was his son was killed. “He had never harmed anyone,” he said.
Distraught over the irreparable loss, Vamsi’s mother Rama said: “We were planning to accord a grand welcome to him when he returned. Now all we get to receive is his body,” she cried.
A victim of hate crime?
G Srinivas Reddy, Vamsi’s roommate during his B tech days in Hyderabad, believes his roommate has become a victim of hate crime.
“It’s unbelievable that a soft spoken person like Vamsi has been killed so brutally. He used to stay away from trouble and violence. I have never seen him speaking loudly. It is a great personal loss for me,” Reddy said.
He added that Vamsi was worried when US President Donald Trump announced his anti-outsider campaign, but he never thought that his friend Vamsi would become one of the earliest victim of the campaign.
“Five days back we chatted for about half an hour and he was happy about completing his MS successfully. He was looking for a good break. He was also planning to be back to India this year. But now everything is gone,” he said.