Andhra pastor found murdered in Hyderabad, police suspect land dispute

A pastor was found brutally murdered in Kondapur on the outskirts of Hyderabad on Friday. According to reports, 46-year-old Satyanarayana Reddy was found murdered near a badminton academy in Masjid Banda of Kondapur. Satyanarayana was a pastor at a church in Anantapur town of Andhra Pradesh.  Police suspect that the murder could have been the result of a land dispute. According to the Times of India, apart from being a pastor, Satyanarayana Reddy was also into real estate business. The Hindu reported that he owned three plots in Kanna Rao Basti in Hyderabad’s Hafeezpet.  Around 11 pm on Friday, two persons who were on their way to the Venu Badminton Academy found the pastor’s body lying in a pool of blood and informed the Gachibowli police. Police identified the victim through identity proofs found on his body. He was then shifted to the hospital, where he was declared to have been brought dead. Police said that the victim was stabbed thrice in the abdomen. The assailants are yet to be identified.  Earlier in July, a YSRCP leader was attacked with knives in Andhra Pradesh’s Guntur town. Police suspected that he was killed by his former aides over a land settlement issue. The leader, Pamidipati Kotaiah, was believed to have been involved in several land settlement cases. His scooter was hit by a car, after which two assailants got out of the car and stabbed Kotaiah.   In 2018, a father and son from a Dalit community were murdered by men from an OBC (Mudiraj) community in Rajanna Sircilla district of Telangana. The murders were believed to have been committed over a long-standing dispute over 39 guntas of land. Activists alleged that the land originally belonged to the victims’ family but was fraudulently seized by the attackers, after which the victims were allegedly assaulted multiple times for trying to claim their land.