Last month, a video showing a 26-year-old Indian Army Jawan Sappeta Swamy from Telangana is talking about threats to his family over a land grabbing case had gone viral. Two weeks after the video was widely shared, Swamy’s 48-year-old father, Sappeta Sai Reddy, has gone missing from his village Chityal, in Tadwai Mandal of Kamareddy district.
His family suspects that he was kidnapped by the same people who had grabbed their agricultural land of six acres.
Swamy, who returned from his posting in Jammu and Kashmir on Wednesday, 3 July, to look for his missing father, released another video in which he said, “Earlier, I had released a video in which I talked about the threat to my mother and father from people who have grabbed our land. I had already said that they were threatening my parents. It’s been hardly 15-20 days since the video was released and my father is missing now.”
In the previous video, Swamy had alleged that a person named Pippiri Anjaneyulu had grabbed his agricultural land and was threatening to kill his parents if they entered the land.
Speaking to TNM, Swamy said, “I call my parents every day in the morning and evening. I spoke with my father on Sunday around 9 am. He left the house around noon, which was the last time the family saw him. When he didn’t return till evening, they started to worry. We tried his phone but it was switched off. We thought he might be talking to some friends and the phone might have run out of charge. We waited all night to see if he would return.”
After waiting for another day, Swamy’s brother-in-law went to the police station in Tadwai and filed a missing person report. Swamy said that they were discouraged from naming the people the family suspects of having kidnapped the father. “They are very wealthy and powerful people. We were told that if we name them in the complaint, and the inquiry doesn’t find them guilty, they could use their influence to harm us further through legal means,” he said.
Swamy said that only last week, one of the alleged land grabbers had threatened his father again. “My father was walking along the road by himself when Ramesh Reddy, Gundreti Sanga Reddy’s son, stopped his bike and warned my father that if he was found alone again, he would not be spared, and would be beaten up or even killed. Since then I’ve been telling my father to be careful and not go out by himself,” Swamy said.
Swamy and his family feel that questioning the three men, Pippiri Anjaneyulu, Gundreti Sanga Reddy and his son Ramesh Reddy, can help in finding his father. “I returned from J&K yesterday just for this. I request that the people who grabbed our land must be questioned so we can find my father,” he said in his video.
When TNM spoke to Swamy’s father last month, he had said that his family was living in fear due to death threats. He alleged that Pippiri Anjaneyulu had been harassing them for a year, and had beaten him up once when he went to see his land.
After the previous video went viral, the District Collector had ordered a probe into the matter. Swamy says that there has been no progress since then. He says that the authorities still want them to approach the Civil Court to settle the matter, which his family cannot afford.
(This article was originally published on The News Minute and has been republished with permission)
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