Hyderabad, July 3: Friday’s encounter death of Maoist leader Ritz Khan has rocked the 14-month-old Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy government with home minister K. Jana Reddy as well as coalition partner Telengana Rashtra Samiti and civil rights groups up in arms against the police and the chief minister.

The Andhra Pradesh home minister kept away from the cabinet meeting that day saying the police did not inform him about the encounter and yesterday called on the chief minister seeking a change of portfolio.

The Telengana Rashtra Samiti ministers have also threatened to pull out of the government if a judicial probe is not ordered into the killing of senior Janashakti leaders.

Ministers of the party yesterday held a high-level meeting in Hyderabad and resolved to walk out of the Rajasekhar Reddy-led Congress government. “If the police continue killing Maoists in encounters after failing to entice them with olive branches, we cannot keep quiet. We might as well sit in Opposition and fight for the cause of the poor and neglected Telengana,” said T. Harish Rao, the youth minister and a cousin of Telengana president K. Chandrasekhar Rao.

The Telengana leader said the legislators and MPs will decide on Monday on their next plan of action.

Rao has appealed to the Maoists to stop the assault on Telengana activists. “Kill me but spare my workers,” he had recently urged Maoists in a public appeal.

The Maoists say TRS members were to blame for getting away with all insults and negligence of Telengana. “It is due to inefficiency of the TRS that the police and Congress party had relaunched their attacks on Maoists and also set aside the demand for Telengana,” said CPI(Maoist) leader Ramakrishna in a recent letter to the media.

The Union minister of state for rural development A. Narendra has appealed to Maoists to not take revenge on Telengana activists for the acts of police personnel and Congress workers. “We are not responsible for their acts. We have been opposing the encounter killing of Maoists,” he said in a statement at Hyderabad yesterday.

Two Maoists were killed this afternoon in the ongoing encounter between police and guerrillas in Guntur district. “Maoists opened fire on a police search party and two activists were killed in the crossfire,” said V.C. Sajjanar, the police superintendent of Guntur.