In the history of Andhra Pradesh, the Bhargava Commission remains a luminous chapter. It began its hearings with the Girayipalli encounter. Bhikshapati, the fifth youth who was tied to a tree but escaped death, became the key eyewitness.
Published Jul 25, 2025 | 9:00 AM ⚊ Updated Jul 25, 2025 | 9:00 AM
Girayipalli killing was the first of many police killings in Andhra Pradesh during the Emergency under the pretext of "encounters." (Representational photo)
Synopsis: Since 1969–70, thousands of revolutionaries and ordinary people have been killed in so-called encounters announced by the police in Andhra Pradesh and across India. But the Girayipalli encounter must be remembered not only because 50 years have passed, but also due to its unique importance.
Exactly 50 years ago, on the night of 25 July 1975, in the forests near Girayipalli village of the then Medak district, the police tied five young men to trees and shot four of them dead.
Although Girayipalli was only a short distance from the Hyderabad–Karimnagar highway, this incident didn’t make news. Back then, there were no sensationalist television channels or social media, and even newspapers were few. Those that existed were suffocating under the censorship imposed just a month earlier as part of the Emergency. There were no local stringers to report such stories, nor is it known whether any district reporters were present. Whatever the Hyderabad police stated officially had to be published as news.
As a result, though the incident occurred on a Friday night just 90 kilometers from Hyderabad, it didn’t appear in newspapers until Tuesday or Wednesday. Even then, what was published simply parroted the state police headquarters’ version. According to the report, the police had gone to a hillock after receiving information that “Naxalites who had already committed one murder in Sirisinagandla and were plotting another” were hiding there. The Naxalites allegedly opened fire and threw bombs despite warnings, forcing the police to return fire in self-defense. After the exchange, four bodies were found.
One newspaper wrote that “two pistols, one submachine gun, five bags, a satchel full of handmade bombs, and CPM literature” were recovered. Other papers carried slightly differing accounts. None of the reports mentioned who the deceased were or whether the bodies were handed over to their families. And because it was the Emergency, such questions could not even be asked.
The leader of the four youths killed was Surapaneni Janardhan, a mechanical engineering final-year student at the Regional Engineering College in Warangal, who had come from Garikaparru in Krishna district and gone to Medak to help build the revolutionary movement. The other three—Lanka Murali Mohan Reddy from Mustyalapalli, who studied intermediate at Lal Bahadur College in Warangal; Vanaparthi Sudhakar from Deshaipet, who worked at the Warangal market committee after high school; and Kolishetty Ananda Rao from Budharaopet, who had completed intermediate and briefly worked—were all from Warangal.
Since 1969–70, thousands of revolutionaries and ordinary people have been killed in so-called encounters announced by the police in Andhra Pradesh and across India. But the Girayipalli encounter must be remembered not only because 50 years have passed, but also due to its unique importance.
This was the first of many police killings in Andhra Pradesh during the Emergency under the pretext of “encounters.” All four of the young men killed were aged between 18 and 25 and had been involved in the revolutionary student movement that had been building over the previous two years. They had gone to Medak district a few months before the Emergency to help build the peasant struggle. Following a murder in a village a month before the Emergency was declared, surveillance in the area increased, and the police captured them. Janardhan was likely apprehended in Siddipet ten days before the incident, and the other three were arrested in Hyderabad a few days later. All were illegally detained for days at the Mulugu Forest Dak Bungalow, where they were subjected to torture. Many others were also held and tortured illegally. Exactly one month after the Emergency was declared, on 25 July, five of them were taken to the Girayipalli forest, just 50 kilometers away, tied to trees—and four were shot dead. Their bodies were burned to destroy evidence, and the news was released to the press as if they had been killed in an encounter.
Since it was the Emergency, the truth didn’t come out for 20 months. But the wave of democracy that followed brought the incident into national focus. Across the country, there was a reckoning with the horrors of the Emergency. In North India, the Shah Commission was set up to investigate these crimes. Around the same time, it emerged that P Rajan, a student at Calicut Regional Engineering College in Kerala, had been taken into custody by the police on 1 March 1976, and never seen again. His father, Eechara Warrier, filed a petition in the Kerala High Court, suspecting that his son had been killed in custody. The case generated nationwide outrage and ultimately confirmed that Rajan had been killed by the police.
Similarly, in Andhra Pradesh, questions were raised about the Girayipalli encounter: was it truly an exchange of fire, or a fake one? It was revealed that over 70 people were killed in fake encounters during the Emergency in Andhra Pradesh. There was growing demand for a judicial inquiry into all these incidents. To pressure the government, Jayaprakash Narayan suggested an independent judicial probe. Accordingly, a committee was formed under Justice VM Tarkunde, former Bombay High Court judge and president of the PUCL-DR.
The Tarkunde Committee began its fact-finding mission with the Girayipalli incident and confirmed that 77 people were killed in fake encounters during the Emergency in Andhra Pradesh. In its first report released on 16 May 1977, the committee presented evidence that the four individuals killed at Girayipalli were already in police custody days before 25 July and were deliberately murdered on that night.
Justice Tarkunde submitted the report to Prime Minister Morarji Desai and Home Minister Charan Singh, met both several times, and discussed the possibility of a central investigation into law and order violations in the state. Eventually, it was agreed that a judicial inquiry would be conducted by a judge nominated by the central government, but appointed by the state government. Thus, the Justice Vashishta Bhargava Commission was formed and announced its first public inquiry on 21 July 1977.
In the history of Andhra Pradesh, the Bhargava Commission remains a luminous chapter. It began its hearings with the Girayipalli encounter. Bhikshapati, the fifth youth who was tied to a tree but escaped death, became the key eyewitness. He led both the Tarkunde and Bhargava commissions to the same trees. Even two years later, both judges observed bullet marks on those trees. A total of 25 witnesses came forward to testify about the arrests, the torture in the Mulugu police station and the forest bungalow, the shooting, and the cremation of the bodies.
Once the commission was formed, senior journalist Adiraju Venkateswara Rao undertook a remarkable act. Using his network, he got a Special Branch Inspector drunk and secretly recorded a full confession of the encounter’s facts. He handed these tapes over to lawyer KG Kannabiran, and they were presented as crucial evidence before the commission. Adiraju later published a book titled “Hanthakulevaru?” (Who Are the Killers?), documenting all these facts.
As the Bhargava Commission hearings progressed and the press began publishing witness testimonies in detail day by day, the fictitious nature of the encounter became widely known. Police officers then approached Chief Minister Channa Reddy, complaining that public hearings were damaging their morale. They pleaded for the hearings to be conducted in camera. When the Chief Minister conveyed this to Justice Bhargava, he refused to hold secret hearings and discontinued the inquiry midway. Even when requested to at least release the completed report on the Girayipalli incident, he declined.
These events from 50 years ago are of immense importance. Though fake encounters had been happening in Telangana for over five years by then, it was the Girayipalli incident that most clearly and publicly exposed the fraudulent nature of such killings. It declared in no uncertain terms that what the police call “encounters” are in fact cold-blooded murders. It remains the only case in Andhra Pradesh—and perhaps in all of India—where a Supreme Court judge conducted a formal inquiry and concluded unequivocally that the victims were captured, tortured for days, tied to trees, and shot dead.
Those whom the government assumed had been eliminated were, three years later, resurrected moment by moment through the judicial process. This episode revealed how many false narratives the police can fabricate, how easily those lies unravel under real investigation, how the police apparatus conspires to protect itself, and how political leadership bends to its will. These revelations were immortalized in poems and songs by various poets including Gaddar who wrote Lal Salaam, Lal Salaam and Voli Volila Ranga Voli. Gaddar also composed the ballad Naxalbari Biddaalu—performed at no fewer than a thousand locations across Andhra Pradesh.
Thirty-seven years after Janardhan’s death, his elder brother SP Mohan Rao wrote a biography titled “Janahrudayam Janardhan”, which enshrined the memory of the Girayipalli martyrs. These martyrs demonstrated how, in a people’s movement, posthumous life can far surpass the impact of life itself. In that sense, the Girayipalli martyrs hold a place of supreme importance in the social history of Telugu-speaking people and Telangana.
(Views are personal. Edited by Majnu Babu).
