After nearly two years of guerrilla war Alluri Sitarama Raju was captured and shot on 7 May 1924, and the rising ended.
01The raids of 1922
The Madras Forest Act shut the hill people out of the forests they had always cut and grazed, and road contractors forced them into unpaid labour. Alluri Sitarama Raju, who had lived among them as an ascetic, gathered them. On 22 August 1922 his band raided the Chintapalle police station and carried off its guns; Krishnadevipeta and Rajavommangi followed within days. In September they ambushed a police party and killed two British officers. The hill country of the Godavari Agency passed out of government control.
02Koyyuru, 1924
The government brought in the Malabar Special Police and companies of the Assam Rifles, and spent heavily to hunt one band in the hills. Raju’s men moved fast and knew every path. In May 1924 he was taken near Koyyuru and shot on 7 May while in custody. His lieutenants were killed or captured in the following weeks. In Andhra he is remembered as Manyam Veerudu, the hero of the forest, and his statue stands in many towns of the coast.
The Rampa rising showed that the forest peoples of India fought for swaraj on their own ground and in their own way.