Varavara Rao, Venugopal briefly detained ahead of meet

HYDERABAD:  As many as 18 members of Revolutionary Writers Association (Virasam) including revolutionary poet Varavara Rao and Editor of Veekshanam magazine N Venugopal were taken into preventive custody by city police.Virasam members, who gave a call to boycott World Telugu Conference, planned to stage protests at Sri Sri’s statue on the Tank Bund on Friday evening. They were shifted to Kanchanbagh police station. Minutes before the protest programme at Tank Bund was to begin, Task Force sleuths  detained Venugopal at his residence and shifted him to Kanchanbagh police station.

Later, police went to Himayatnagar residence of Varavara Rao and took him into custody. When Virasam members KV Kurmanath, Ravi, Ramki  and Kakarala were proceeding towards Sri Sri statue, they were detained too. Condemning the arrest, Varavara Rao said it was victory for Virasam as the government became jittery over the proposed protest programme planned by them.

“The State government is organising the conference to promote Bhramnical ideology and encouraging capitalists. These policies will have a bad impact on modern poets and budding writers,” he alleged. All of them were let off on Friday around 11 pm.Virasam called for boycott of Telugu conference as State was suppressing the voices of Telanagana writers, poets by arresting them. Police said they took custody of several persons including women when they tried to stage a protest.