He’s been to death’s door and back more than once, but Kura Rajanna has never stepped back from a fight. Even today, 63 and ailing, he is fighting to clear his name of criminal charges, says R Prithviraj Rajanna, along with his comrades, was on hunger strike for half of his 1,000 days in prison — mostly in connection with prison reform and improved facilities.
At 63, Kura Rajanna is ailing, but still hasn’t lost the drive and determination to fight out the ‘false cases’ pending against him for long. After all, the CPI-ML (Janasakthi) state committee secretary has been largely successful in his legal battles with the powers-that-be: of the 20 cases registered against him, the government withdrew five on its own even as he has been acquitted in 13 of remaining 15. The old man is now fighting the two cases.
Rajanna, a native of Vemulavada in the north-western Karimnagar district, is an engineer by training. But his mission these days is to give a boost to the movement for a separate Telangana state after the “bourgeoisie parties” in his native Andhra Pradesh have failed to impart it proper thrust and direction.
A decade ago, on November 11, 1999, Rajanna lost his wife Rangavalli in a “police encounter” in the jungles of Warangal. Today, the widower is recuperating from angioplasty in a Hyderabad hospital.
The revolutionary is unafraid of not just the police bullets but the surgeon’s scalpel too. For, he is a veteran patient of sorts. Rajanna has so far undergone a bypass, done a prior angioplasty, got the gall bladder removed and the kneecaps replaced. His backbone continues to give him trouble. And, as if these weren’t enough, he is grappling with diabetes and hypertension.
When this reporter visited him in hospital, Rajanna was engrossed in rare moments of a reunion with his brother Amar, another Janashakthi leader, currently lodged in Cherlapalli central prison (and granted permission by the court to meet his sibling). The brothers discuss prison reforms rather than family matters.
Rajanna‘s ‘military cap’ and flowing beard bespeak the hardships he has been through. His son, Samar, now 23 and a postgraduate, had been brought up by his maternal grandparents to whom he was sent when only three months old. “What did I give him to make him want to visit me?” asks Rajanna in a philosophical tone.
The two cases that still bother the activist are the Sircilla Conspiracy Case and another relating to attempt to escape from police while being brought to Jagtiyal from Barabanki in 2006.
There was an element of drama ahead of his arrest in the second case. It was on August 31. Rajanna, along with four comrades, was travelling in a bus from Lucknow to Sitapur. When it reached Barabanki bus station, a plainclothes man approached Rajanna, put an arm around his shoulder and said, “Bhai saab, aap se kaam hai (Brother, I need a small help).”
Rajanna sought the man’s identity but the stranger tightened his grip on him and repeated the words. “Then I knew who he was,” Rajanna says. “Meanwhile, I saw the bus had in fact more policemen in mufti. They had caught hold of my colleagues too. We resisted, but found there were even more policemen…they had been following the bus in a Qualis. They overpowered us, and bundled me into the Qualis. The others were meanwhile dumped into another vehicle.”
Rajanna says the vehicles were stopped at four places on their way to Andhra Pradesh. “All of it in forest areas…to bump us off. But they didn’t succeed in it because by
then the media had gone to town about our arrest.”
On reaching their home state, the foursome was put in a camp near Jagtiyal town in Karimnagar district where his comrades were subjected to the third-degree punishment. Later, they were all produced in Metapalli court and sent to Warangal Central Prison.
In prison, he was put in Security Block I. As the state government does not recognise Naxalite outfits as political parties, they did not have access to privileges like meeting people at will and speaking about party ideology before the media.
Rajanna, along with his comrades, was on hunger strike for half of his 1,000 days in prison, mostly in connection with prison reform and improved facilities. “The jail manual was written in 1894 during the British Raj and has never been changed,” he points out.
Often they resorted to hunger strike, and the prison authorities and the police would try to stop them from proceeding “But with little success,” Rajanna says.
Anyway, for a long time, struggles have been practically a way of life for Rajanna.
— raj@epmltd.com