As announced, senior Tollywood actor Akkineni Nagarjuna filed a criminal defamation case against Telangana state environment and forests minister Konda Surekha for allegedly dragging his family into her political slugfest with Bharat Rashtra Samithi working president K T Rama Rao.
Nagarjuna, who had announced that he would serve a legal notice on Surekha soon after his return from Visakhapatnam on Thursday morning, directly filed a criminal case against Surekha at the Nampally criminal courts for defaming his family’s reputation.
He said Surekha’s comments had caused a lot of disrepute to his family members and their personal status in the society. He sought the court’s intervention in taking punitive action against the minister.
Sources said Nagarjuna’s sudden decision was quite contrary to his earlier tweet which was a decent and polite condemnation of Surekha’s comments. Apparently, he decided to take an aggressive posture on the issue as an afterthought.
It is an open secret that Nagarjuna is terribly angry with the Congress government in Telangana headed by chief minister A Revanth Reddy, after the latter got his N-Convention Centre at Madhapur demolished, caring a damn for his celebrity status.
During the demolition itself, Nagarjuna made some strong comments against the Revanth government, describing it as hasty action without giving him an opportunity to explain his stand.
“It is obvious that Nagarjuna’s prime target is Revanth Reddy, rather than Surekha. If he succeeds in getting Surekha censured, it would damage the reputation of Revanth Reddy,” sources said.
Since the entire Tollywood stood by Nagarjuna, his legal fight against the Congress government is also expected to get full support from the film industry.
“One won’t be surprised if this controversy leads to the Telugu film industry gradually moving out of Hyderabad to Andhra Pradesh in the coming days,” sources said.
