The Andhra Pradesh high court on Friday convicted 11 persons for the murder of Y S Raja Reddy, father of Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhar Reddy, and sentenced them to life imprisonment.

A division bench, consisting of Justice A Gopal Reddy and Justice G Yethirajulu, convicted the main accused Perla Somasekhara Reddy and 10 others. The bench held the accused guilty of chasing and murdering Raja Reddy in an inhuman manner by hatching a conspiracy.

The bench pronounced its verdict on the appeals filed by the state government against the judgement of the sessions court at Kadapa, which had acquitted them on the ground that the prosecution had failed to prove the charges.

On April 12, 2004, Kadapa Fast Track Court Judge M Chalapathi Rao had acquitted all the 16 accused in the sensational murder of Raja Reddy (75) in a bomb attack in Vemula in Kadapa district in 1998.

Raja Reddy was killed by rivals who hurled bombs on his car near a culvert in Vemula town while he was going from YSR estate at Idupulapaya to Pulivendula on May 23, 1998, afternoon. He died instantly in the car in the brutal attack.

Subsequently, the state government entrusted the case to the Crime Branch-Criminal Investigation Department, which registered a case against 19 accused persons, all of them Telugu Desam Party functionaries, and chargesheeted them in 1999.

One of the accused, Perla Uma Maheswara Reddy, who sustained splinter injuries while attacking Raja Reddy, was hacked to death in his house in Vemula in retaliation on the same day.

Former Vempalle mandal parishad president S V Satish Kumar Reddy was excluded from the list of accused during CID investigation. Another accused P Brahmananda Reddy, died in a road accident during the course of trial.

The other accused were former Pulivendula market committee chairman Perla Parthasarathi Reddy and his brothers -- Perla Somasekhara Reddy, Perla Sesha Reddy, Perla Ramajaneya Reddy, Perla Ramakrishna Reddy -- Kanala Sudhakar Reddy, Bala Bayyapu Reddy, Bojja Nagamalla Reddy, Annareddy Sambasiva Reddy and Annareddy Srinivasa Reddy, Annareddy Dasireddigari Lakshmi Reddy, Palle Venkatarami Reddy, former mandal president of Vemula Vaddarapu Obaiah, Ragipindi Sudhakar Reddy, O Ramana Reddy and Poreddy Viswanatha
Reddy.

The murder of Raja Reddy had led to rioting and arson in Pulivendula and Vemula mandals and the retaliatory hacking to death of an accused Perla Uma Maheswara Reddy on the same day.