TWIST IN THE TALE: Julakanti Srinivas Reddy alias Moddu Sreenu in hospital care in Hyderabad after he was hurt in a bomb explosion. — Photo: P.V. Sivakumar

HYDERABAD: After evading arrest for 10 months, Julakanti Srinivas Reddy alias Moddu Sreenu, the prime accused in the murder of Telugu Desam MLA Paritala Ravi, landed dramatically in police net when a bomb he was making went off in a lodge on the city fringes on Thursday.

The fugitive, whom even the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) could not trace all these days, reportedly checked into Sri Supraja lodge, 100 yards away from Chandanagar police station, on Wednesday morning, along with an unidentified person who vanished later.

Around 10.30 a.m., a blast occurred in Sreenu's room on the fourth floor of the lodge. "When our workers ran upstairs to find out as to what had happened, Srinu was lying unconscious in a pool of blood near the elevator," said lodge manager B. Madhu. The blood-stained footprints from his room till the elevator suggested that he tried in vain either to run away or for help, the police said.

The local police rushed to the spot and shifted the victim to a private hospital in Kukatpally where he gave his name as Narayana.

The policemen escorting him did not know that the injured person was one of the most wanted men in the State.

They realised this only after they shifted him to Gandhi hospital where the barely conscious man said he was Sreenu hailing from Guntur.

Two sleuths of the Hyderabad Task Force, who were called in, confirmed that he was Moddu Sreenu after seeing a tattoo on his chest.

Doctors said the condition of the victim, who sustained serious injuries on the right thumb and palm, the left shoulder and face, was "still critical".

Arms,ammunition found

Cyberabad Police Commissioner M. Mahender Reddy said a .38 revolver, some detonators, ammonium nitrate powder, batteries, fuse wires and a mobile were recovered from the lodge room. Police sources said the explosion occurred while Srinu was stuffing the ammonium nitrate powder mixed in kerosene into an empty bulb.

As soon as Sreenu's arrest became known, the Telugu Desam Party demanded that he should be immediately handed over to the CBI, which was investigating Paritala Ravi's murder, and all the vital evidence, including his mobile phone containing the numbers of important persons, be safeguarded.

This was important since Sreenu had threatened to kill two more persons in an interview to a television channel. In his reaction, Chief Minister Y S. Rajasekhara Reddy said the law would take its own course and the killers would not be spared.

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