Reddy rivals say they were attacked

30.03.10 : The murky politics of mining in Bellary district was in for a fresh twist on Monday when members of a mining group, at the forefront of a legal campaign against the Reddy brothers, were attacked by a group of unidentified men.

The Tappal brothers from the Tumti Mining Company, who are associated with a local Congress leader, were attacked by a group of eight men on Monday morning outside the Bala Regency hotel in Bellary City. They were waiting outside the hotel to meet Survey of India officials who are in Bellary on the directions of the Supreme Court to survey the disputed boundaries of mine holdings on the Andhra Pradesh-Karnataka border. The Tappal brothers and the Reddy brothers, ministers in the state cabinet, are among several mining leaseholders on the Andhra-Karnataka border engaged in boundary disputes with each other.

Tappal Ganesh who is the litigant from the Tappal family in a Supreme Court case against the Reddy brothers, was reportedly hit on his legs with wooden logs while his brothers Ekambaram and Chandrashekhar escaped unscathed. A journalist from the local Suvarna News Channel who was with the Tappal brothers at the time suffered minor injuries while three other journalists who were present at the site of the attack received scratches. “I was paying the bill when the attackers came. My brother was, however, cornered. Luckily many of the blows did not get him and he managed to run into a neighbouring shop to escape the attackers. My nephew also suffered some injuries,” Tappal Ekambaram, the younger brother of Tappal Ganesh said over the telephone.