Hyderabad: Leftist extremists belonging to the outlawed Communist Party of India-Maoist shot dead a lawmaker in Andhra Pradesh Kadiri Sarveshara Rao on Sunday afternoon.

Visakhapatnam district superintendent of police Rahul Dev Sharma said that Member of state legislative assembly belonging to the ruling Telugu Desam Party was shot dead when he was visiting interior tribal areas to interact with the local people. “about 40 to 50 Maoists carried out the attack”, he said. Another former law maker S Soma was also killed in the attack.

Police officials suspect that the attack was led by Ramakrishna, secretary, Andhra Odisha Border committee of CPI Maoist. Ramakrishna who earlier headed Andhra State Committee had narrowly escaped police dragnet in 2005 and was largely based in Chhattisgarh and Odisha since then.

The incident occurred in Lipittipattu village under Dumbriguda block of Visakhapatanama, about 700km north of east of Hyderabad.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu who was in the United State on an official visit strongly condemned the attack. In a statement issued through his office Naidu said, “all the democratic forces should strongly condemn the dastardly act”. He recalled the services Sarveshwara Rao and S Soma had rendered for the tribal people.

It is after a lull of several years that the armed Maoists have carried out such a major attack in Andhra Pradesh and killed a lawmaker.

Kadiri Sarveshwara Rao was elected to the state assembly in 2014 from Araku constituency on the opposition YSR Congress party ticket but later switched to the ruling TDP and became the government whip in the assembly. He was survived by wife and two sons.

The CPI Maoist was on the run from the erstwhile united Andhra Pradesh since 2005 when the much touted peace talks between the armed ultras and the then Congress party government in the state broke down and the police launched a massive crackdown killing dozens of their top leaders and armed members in various operations.

The latest incident was reminiscent of killing of Congress party law maker Narsi Reddy and 8 others in a major attack in Narayanpet town of Mahbubnagar district on August 15, 2005.

Since the state was bifurcated and Telangana state was formed the Maoists were trying to regroup and return to the region and resumed their activities in the tribal and forest areas adjoining Odisha and Chhattisgarh.