Telangana’s Forests Minister Konda Surekha has stirred a hornet’s nest with her bombshell allegations against Bharat Rashtra Samithi leader KT Rama Rao. These allegations include being the reason behind the divorce of actors Naga Chaitanya and Samantha Ruth Prabhu, drugs, and blackmail. Mr. Rao has served Surekha a legal notice accusing her of defamation.
Things took a turn for the worse when veteran Telugu actor and Naga Chaitanya’s father, Nagarjuna Akkineni, attacked Surekha’s statements, saying they were “totally irrelevant and false,” demanding an immediate retraction.
He took to X, formerly Twitter, to say,
“I strongly condemn the comments of the Honorable Minister Mrs. Konda Surekha. Don’t use the lives of movie stars who stay away from politics to criticize your opponents. Please respect other people’s privacy.”
Bollywood actor Samantha Ruth Prabhu, on her part, has tweeted to ask the Telangana minister to behave “responsibly and respectfully” regarding people’s privacy while keeping her out of political rows. Former Minister and Mr. Rao’s party colleague Harish Rao Thanneeru, too, has demanded an unconditional apology from the Congress leader.
Surekha named KT Rama Rao, son of former Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, the person responsible for several actresses leaving the film industry and marrying young. She accused him of blackmailing the film personalities after leading them into drug addiction.
She subsequently suspected Rao of being the mastermind behind a series of posts that were derogatory to her. This comes in the backdrop of her facing online abuse after a photo went viral showing BJP leader and Medak MP Raghunandan Rao garlanding her at an event, for which she accused BRS leaders of trying to bring her down on grounds of her gender.
Naga Chaitanya was married to Samantha Ruth Prabhu and divorced her two years ago. In August, he got engaged to actor Sobhita Dhulipala.
