Eight persons were sentenced to life imprisonment in the sensational murder case of a Telugu Desam Party MLA by a Anantpur district court of Andhra Pradesh on Thursday. On Thursday,principal district and sessions court convicted the eight accused - Panduga Narayana Reddy,Vallupalli Rekhamaiah,Ranganayakulu,Vadde Konda,Vadde Seena,Medimi Obi Reddy,Peddi Reddy and Vanna Hanumantha Reddy - and sentenced them to life imprisonment in a case relating to murder of MLA Paritala Ravindra in January 2005,a CBI release said. It was alleged that Ravindra,then sitting MLA of Penugonda constituency in Anantapur,was murdered in broad daylight inside the TDP office where more than 500 party members had gathered. The assailants,guised as armed security personnel,had shot at the legislator and threw bombs outside the TDP office. Initial police investigations found the motive behind the killing to be age-old family rivalry. The case was transferred to the CBI a month later,and the probe revealed that the conspiracy was hatched by one Gangula Suryanarayana Reddy while he was undergoing life imprisonment for an earlier attempt to kill Ravindra in 1997,which was popularly known as Jubilee Hills bomb blast case. CBI had also exhumed the body of the deceased and collected vital evidence,such as cartridges,which were not recovered earlier during post-mortem examination. Charges were framed against the accused persons in December 2007 by the trial court which convicted eight people while four were acquitted.
