Koneru denies role of grand-children in case

VIJAYAWADA: Minister for Municipal Administration, Koneru Ranga Rao, today, held the first ever press conference to deny the involvement of his grand- children in the infamous Ayesha murder case. Ayesha’s parents had accused the involvement of the Minister’s relatives in the case.
The Minister, who was accompanied by Vijayawada MP, Lagadapati Rajagopal and former MLA Jaleel Khan, said the charges levelled against his grand-children were false and were part of the smear campaign by the opposition Telugu Desam party which was jealous of Koneru Ranga Rao’s clean image.
Rajagopal further said that Ranga Rao’s good nature was taken advantage of. He said a vernacular newspaper had mentioned a person’s name which had the word `Koneru’ in it.
Ranga Rao had even offered to let his grand-children to be questioned by the police, he recalled.
Asked as to why Ayesha’s mother would accuse Ranga Rao’s grand-children of their involvement in her latest petition in the Vijayawada magistrate court, he said that she was being misled or prompted by the Telugu Desam party only to defame his family and gain political mileage out of it “I am ready, if the police wants to interrogate my grand-children but do not unnecessarily blame them only because they are my grand-children,” he said. Besides his several bouts of anger towards the Press for asking him some uneasy questions, Ranga Rao vehemently denied the role of his grand-children in the case.
Rajagopal said the Press, the politicians and the people’s organisations too were playing a part in the process of investigating the case which was actually the responsibility of the police.
Some reporters asked former MLA Jaleel Khan: “Why did you stage a dharna when you think that the law will take its own course?” Caught unawares by the question, Jaleel Khan, who had joined TDP and recently shifted his loyalties to the Congress, said: “I was a TDP member then and had to do my duty of protesting against the injustice perpetrated upon a girl belonging to a minority community.”