YSRCP leader and former Minister Perni Nani today made a reference to Pawan Kalyan's surrender of his licensed weapon, a US-made .22 caliber revolver, at the Jubilee Hills police station in Hyderabad in 2007. "He didn't do it voluntarily. He was asked by the police to do so after his own family member publicly complained of facing a threat to her life," Nani said today.
For those who are not aware of the highly-publicized incident, here is what happened. The surrender was precipitated by a family dispute. The situation arose when Chiranjeevi’s daughter, Srija, eloped and married her boyfriend (Sirish Bharadwaj). Following the marriage, Srija publicly stated that she feared for her life and alleged that her family, including her uncle Pawan Kalyan, had hired musclemen to threaten them. Deeply hurt by these public allegations, Pawan Kalyan walked into the police station to hand over his firearm and its license. He explicitly stated to the media that his family loved Srija deeply and held no malice against the couple.
The Srija-Sirish duo got separated four years later. Reports later surfaced in the media that Chiranjeevi gave Sirish a whopping sum of Rs 33 Cr as "final settlement". When Sirish died due to a terminal illness in 2024, his mother refuted the gossip, saying that they were defamatory in nature and that they continued to live in a rented house. "We didn't ask for anything from the actor's family. We only asked them to look after the daughter of Sirish and Srija well," Sirish's mother told a YouTube channel.
