SRIKAKULAM: The police on Sunday arrested two persons on charges of making life-threatening phone calls to transport minister K Atchannaidu. The accused identified as Murapaka Kalidas Sharma from Parvatipuram of Vizianagaram district and Josyula Sankara Rao of Komatlapeta in Rayaghada of Odisha, both priests by profession, gave multiple threatening calls to a local scribe, claiming that the minister’s life was in danger. According to police, they did this to hog the limelight. ON September 28 last year, the duo, in an anonymous phone call to a local scribe and did it again on January 2.
“Apart from this, they had stuffed eight slurry explosives and eight electronic detonators in a tyre and put it as a stopper at Peddabammidi Junction nearby the native village of the minister,” SP CM Trivikram Varma told the media on Sunday.
According to police, the accused are working as priests and part-time astrologers. In the past, they deliberately first predicted bad future of many people and suggested corrective rituals to spin easy money.
They tried to replicate the same strategy in the minister’s case too. “They rang up the local scribe and claimed that they were members of a Maoist group and they wanted to kill the minister. To make it appear real, they also planted the explosives at Peddabammidi Junction which were unearthed by the police on January 12,” the police said.
Having traced the area from which the phone calls were made, the SP deployed five police teams for investigation. One team went to Rayagada and Parlakhemundi of Odisha and another started searching in the Nimmada and Kotabommali areas.
The teams nabbed Josyula Sankara Rao at Meliaputti while Kalidas was nabbed from his ashram at Parvatipuram on Sunday. It is learnt that the accused procured 13 slurry explosives and 13 electronic detonators from Odisha.