01The raid
The forest people of the Visakhapatnam and Godavari hills had lost their right to shift cultivation and to take wood under the forest laws, and were forced to work on roads for contractors at next to no wage. Alluri Sitarama Raju, a young sannyasi who had lived among them, told them to give up drink, settle quarrels in their own panchayats, and then fight. On 22 August 1922 his men walked into the police station at Chintapalli and took its muskets and ammunition, leaving a record of what they had taken. On the next two days they raided the stations at Krishnadevipeta and Rajavommangi.
02Two years in the hills
For nearly two years Raju’s bands ambushed police and Assam Rifles columns in the forests, and the Madras government spent lakhs of rupees to hunt him. He was captured near Koyyuru on 7 May 1924 and shot. Andhra remembers him as Manyam Veerudu, the hero of the forest, and Chintapalli as the place where the rising began. The district in which it lies was named after him in 2022, the centenary of the raid.
The life of this place
- 22 August 1922Alluri Sitarama Raju’s men raid the Chintapalli police station.
- 7 May 1924Raju is captured near Koyyuru and shot.
- 2022The new Alluri Sitharama Raju district is formed, taking in Chintapalli.
