Hyderabad: A pall of gloom descended over Judcherla mandal in Mahbubnagar district on Wednesday as the final rites of slain sub-inspector Siddaiah were conducted.
At the funeral, several hundred police officers, political leaders, relatives, and villagers queued up to pay their last respects to the martyr.
According to Siddaiah’s brother Dastagiri, he had always wanted to be a police officer.
“When he was in Class X, Siddaiah had expressed his wish to become a cop. And even after growing up, he had never applied for a job, but had only aimed at becoming a cop,” Mr Dastagiri said.
People from Atmakur, where he was SI at the time of the gun battle, remembers him as an upright officer.
Siddaiah’s wife gave birth to their child on the day he was fatally injured in the gun battle.
Telangana state DGP Anurag Sharma, health minister C. Lakshma Reddy, Opposition leader Jana Reddy and several other prominent personalities attended the funeral.
Earlier, Chief Minister K. Chandeasekhar Rao, Union minister M. Venkaiah Naidu, YSRCP chief Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy and home minister Nayini Narasimha Reddy had called on his family to console them.
Meanwhile, Siddaiah’s four-day-old baby boy is in ICU, under observation by doctors at Rainbow Hospital.
The child had undergone a surgery as his breathing and food pipes were connected and had to be separated. The surgery was successful, but the child will be kept in ICU for at least four days.
