It has been nearly five days since the tragic boat accident occurred in Godavari river near Katchuluru village of Devipatnam mandal in East Godavari district and so far, 38 bodies were found.
Luckily, the tragedy has not been politicised by the opposition Telugu Desam Party leaders much, mainly because they were preoccupied in gaining political mileage from the suicide of former assembly speaker Kodela Sivaprasada Rao.
Moreover, it was a tragedy which would not fetch any big political benefits to any political party and any such attempt would have only boomeranged on them.
But surprisingly, former MP from Amalapuram G V Harsha Kumar surfaced from nowhere on Thursday, after keeping silent all these days, and started making wild allegations.
God knows who told him, but the ex-MP said there were 93 members on board of the ill-fated boat, not 73 as claimed by the officials.
Harsha Kumar went on to say that though Devipatnam sub-inspector had objected to running of the boats when the flood was on, he was forced to give permission after getting a phone call from the superintendent of police and district collector.
He said tourism minister Avanti Srinivas had called the SP and instructed him to allow the boat to be operated in the river.
What is more sensational was that the ex-MP alleged that there were illegal activities going on in the boat in the name of tourism.
Harsha Kumar also charged the authorities with deliberately delaying in retrieving the boat only to hush up the total number of deaths.
Stating that the officials were misleading the chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, he said several leaders and officials had illegitimate shares in the tourism operations.
The SP, however, strongly denied Harsha Kumar’s allegations, while Avanti Srinivas threatened to file defamation suit against the ex-MP for making such baseless allegations.
