TNN Jan 8, 2010, 03.25am IST
HYDERABAD: Congress workers went on a rampage across Andhra Pradesh on Thursday after a regional TV channel flashed a report claiming that former CM Y S Rajasekhara Reddy's death in a copter crash on September 2 was allegedly engineered by loyalists of the Ambani brothers, because YSR took them on over the huge gas reserves in the Krishna-Godavari basin in coastal Andhra.
Highly placed officials in both the Mukesh and Anil Ambani camps expressed shock and dismay at the ''completely fabricated and untrue'' report and said that formal statements would be issued later since it was a highly sensitive issue.
The TV report referred to an article written by one Mark Ames, a California-born American journalist and writer, on a website, exiledonline.com titled 'Enemy of Larry Summers Ex-Boss Dies in Mysterious Helicopter Crash.' Summers is currently director of the White House's National Economic Council for President Barack Obama. According to Ames, Summers worked for Mukesh Ambani, head of Reliance Industries Limited, right until he took the White House job.
After moving to Moscow in 1993, Ames started a magazine titled The Exile. In June 2008, he fled the Russian capital to Panama after being pursued by the authorities and continues to run The Exile online. The said article appeared on the website on December 31, 2009, and was flashed by the TV channel on Thursday evening.
In the article, Ames states that even as the Ambani brothers were feuding, the Andhra Pradesh government sought its due share of the hydrocarbon asset. He said YSR also attacked their mother, Kokilaben, who brokered the deal dividing up the business empire between her feuding sons. According to Ames, after saying that the gas dispute cannot be left to the mother and seeking the Centre's intervention, YSR died in a mysterious helicopter crash.
Within minutes of the TV channel airing the report, Congress workers took to the streets all across the state and attacked all business establishments which had the name Reliance on them.
