Hyderabad:
He escaped from a Vijayawada hospital ward on Sunday night and went missing. Many hours and national headlines later, Congress MP from Vijayawada, Lagadapati Rajagopal, surfaced at Hyderabad's Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) Hospital on Monday afternoon.
Rajagopal, in black T-shirt and jacket, arrived in an autorickshaw and ran into a ward to get admitted. While details are still awaited on why the Congress MP did this, the adventure has claimed some victims. Vijayawada Police Commissioner K V Rajendranath Reddy, along with some other police officers, has been suspended for negligence of duty in allowing the escape.
Rajagopal's flight from Vijayawada was the latest embarrassment for the ruling Congress. Chief minister K Rosaiah held a meeting with his ministers on the missing MP, his wife said she planned to approach the Andhra High court to demand that the MP be produced and the Andhra Pradesh DGP suspended.
Rajagopal, who was on an indefinite hunger strike, was arrested on Saturday, and was taken to hospital to monitor his health. His fast, he said, was his way of demanding that the government reverse its decision to sanction a new Telangana state. Rajagopal has become the rallying point of Congress MPs and MLAs who say they stand for a "United Andhra."
In hospital, he refused any medical assistance, and asked that he be moved to the NIMS in Hyderabad. The government was unwilling to do this, because it was worried that Rajagopal's appearance in Hyderabad would provoke violent protests.
Rajagopal allegedly walked out of his hospital room at 10.30 pm on Sunday night. Eyewitnesses say he got into a waiting car as hundreds of Congress workers mobbed the 300-odd policemen posted outside the hospital.
Since the union government sanctioned a new state of Telangana earlier this month, Andhra has plunged into a political crisis. Political parties, including the Congress, have seen gigantic divisions between MLAs from Telangana and non-Telangana states. 146 MLAs have resigned in protest from the Andhra Assembly. They include actor-politician Chiranjeevi, who heads the Praja Rajyam Party (PRP).
The Centre has not announced whether it will change its mind about Telangana. Party sources say the government that's unlikely to happen; instead, the process of forming a new state will move very slowly, to prevent public violence and political dissent.