Slain YSR Congress leader YS Vivekananda Reddy buried

Kadapa (Andhra Pradesh), March 16 (IANS) YSR Congress party leader and former state Minister Y.S. Vivekananda Reddy, who was found murdered on Friday, was buried on Saturday.

YSR Congress party chief and the slain leader's nephew Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy along with other family members attended the funeral at Pulivendula town in Kadapa district amid tight security.

On Friday morning, the 68-year-old former MP was found in a pool of blood in his house.

Initially, the family members said he died of cardiac arrest.

However, on a complaint by his personal assistant, the police registered a case of unnatural death under Section 174 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and began investigations.

Less than a month before the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections in the state, the murder has triggered a huge row between the ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the opposition YSR Congress.

While the opposition blamed Chief Minister and TDP president N. Chandrababu Naidu for the murder and demanded an investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the TDP alleged that some family members tried to wipe out the evidence from the crime scene before lodging a complaint with the police.

Meanwhile, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) has begun a probe into the case.

Vivekananda Reddy was elected from Kadapa Lok Sabha constituency on a Congress ticket in 1999 and 2004. He was twice elected to the Andhra Pradesh Assembly (1989, 1994) from Pulivendula, a family stronghold.

Vivekananda was also elected to the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council in 2009 and served as Agriculture Minister in the Kiran Kumar Reddy cabinet.

Vivekananda later quit the Congress and joined the YSR Congress. He lost in the election to the Legislative Council in 2017.