Karimnagar, : On the early morning of November 7, 1986, in Algunur village of Karimnagar district, Japa Lakshma Reddy was dragged out of his house by the police and shot dead. His family members identified the killers as police officers. He was 65 years old at the time of his death.
Behind his thick moustache, faded beard, and the wrinkled face of a Telangana farmer, there lived a fearless revolutionary spirit. In Karimnagar, his name was synonymous with honesty, courage, and dedication to people’s rights.
Lakshma Reddy, a farmer from Algunur (now merged with Karimnagar town), joined the Telangana Armed Struggle at a young age and worked as a courier. His association with democratic people’s movements began during that era. Between 1950 and 1959, he served as a member of the CPI Karimnagar district committee and later as the village sarpanch of Algunur for 15 years.
For over four decades, he actively contributed to leftist and democratic struggles across Telangana. He organized agitations on public issues such as electricity and irrigation, mobilizing thousands. In the early 1970s, when fake encounter killings began in the state, Lakshma Reddy was among the few who openly protested against them.
In 1974, he became one of the founding members of the Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee (APCLC). When the government declared parts of Karimnagar district as “disturbed areas” in 1978, granting extraordinary powers to the police, Lakshma Reddy took up the responsibility of building the civil rights movement in the region. Inspired by him, several young lawyers and teachers joined the struggle.
He bravely stood up against illegal detentions, police excesses, and state repression. He was known for exposing unlawful arrests through the press, saving the lives of many detainees.
But the same state that he challenged for decades eventually silenced him. On the pretext that People’s War Party was behind the killing of Peddapalli DSP Buchireddy, the Telugu Desam government under N.T. Rama Rao ordered an encounter. On November 7, 1986, Japa Lakshma Reddy was shot dead by the police.
What even the Razakars during the Nizam’s rule and the landlords during the Telangana struggle did not dare to do, was done by a government in independent India. Japa Lakshma Reddy, who dedicated his life to democracy and people’s rights, became a martyr for justice.
On his death anniversary, leaders of the Civil Liberties Committee paid rich tributes, remembering him as a guiding light for future generations in the struggle for civil rights and social justice.
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