Visakhapatnam: The sleepy little hamlet of Thanelanka in Mummadivaram mandal of East Godavari district has suddenly found itself in the news, albeit for the wrong reasons.Pedapata is home to J Srinivas, the man who attacked YSRC chief Jaganmohan Reddy at the Visakhapatnam airport on October 25, sparking a political uproar across the state that is now beginning to echo in the power corridors of the national capital.Villagers of Thanelanka say Srinivas did not display any anti-social behaviour, and suspect that he was brainwashed by someone or lured with the promise of money to do the job at someone’ s behest.What is most surprising, say villagers, is the contents of the letter. “Those are not his words. He has no knowledge of the issues mentioned in the letter. Someone else has written the letter and has propped him up as a pawn. Srinivas was acting out a script written by someone, but sadly he now has no future left,” a villager told TOI requesting not to be named.There are speculations of Srinivas being swayed by promises of wealth. “Rumours abound that Srinivas was interested in buying an acre of farmland. Here, an acre of farmland costs Rs 1 crore. We were shocked to hear this. How was he planning on paying for it? His father owned some coconut groves through which a monthly income of Rs 40,000 would be generated, but nothing more,” said another villager. Just outside Thanelanka are two hamlets – Chinnapeta and Pedapata. The area is a TDP bastion, and Srinivas was the only one to have defied stiff resistance from his community in order to put up hoardings of YSRC, villagers said. The stunt did not go down well with villagers, who burnt the first hoarding. A persistent Srinivas erected the hoarding again, this time to be torn off by villagers. Srinivas ran into trouble with TDP leaders for not supporting the ruling party despite obtaining housing loans from the government and continuing to support the YSRC.

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