Even after two hours of confirming the death of senior Telugu Desam Party leader and former Andhra Pradesh assembly speaker Kodela Sivaprasada Rao, neither doctors nor the family members revealed the actual cause of death.
However, it is evident that Kodela’s was not natural death, as the doctors have decided to conduct the post-mortem.
The family members have formally lodged a complaint with the Banjara Hills police, who came to Basavarama Tharakam hospital and shifted the dead body to Osmania Hospital for post-mortem.
There were reports that Kodela had committed suicide by hanging himself to death at his residence in Hyderabad in the morning.
There were also reports that he might have taken sleeping pills or himself injected poison into his body.
His family members immediately shifted him to Nandamuri Basavarama Tarakam Hospitals at Banjara Hills, where the doctors kept him on ventilator and tried to resuscitate him, but he succumbed at around 12.30 pm.
Kodela was 72. He is survived by his wife Sasikala, son Shivaram and daughter Vijayalakshmi. His younger son Satyanarayana died a couple of years ago.
Kodela had done his post-graduation in medicine and had been running a hospital at Narsaraopet. He entered politics in 1982, following a call given by TDP founder and former chief minister N T Rama Rao.
He had been a six-time MLA, five times from Narsaraopet assembly constituency in Guntur district continuously from 1983 to 2009 and one time MLA from Sattenapalli between 2014 and 2019.
He was a cabinet minister during NTR and Chandrababu Naidu regimes, holding portfolios of home, health, panchayat raj and major irrigation.
He was the first speaker of the residuary Andhra Pradesh state assembly in his last term.
In the recent assembly elections, Kodela lost to YSR Congress party candidate Ambati Rambabu in Sattenapalli.