Police said about 12 ultras of Sarnapalli Dalam of PWG went to the house of excise and prohibition minister, M Venkaateswara Rao at Dharmaram village in Nizamabad district and blasted it with explosives this morning.

The Naxals, who came in a jeep with two buckets full of explosives, asked the inmates to come out before blasting it, police said. The minister was away in Hyderabad at the time of the incident, police said adding that the action was suspected to be in retaliation to a recent encounter in the district in which five Naxals were killed.

In another incident in Naxal-infested Karimnagar district last evening, ten Naxals of Jansakthi group Mahesh Dalam, shot dead the district TDP leader and Bandalingampalli village Upa-Sarpanch, GantaChandra Goud (54).

Police said the Naxals had suspected him to be a police informer. In yet another incident, the Naxals chased one person of Korutla village in the same district and shot him dead last night.

The victim, identified as I Rajeshwara, was also suspected to be a police informer. Rao, who was inducted into Chandrababu Naidu cabinet in the recent reshuffle, was earlier kidnapped by Naxalites in 1989 when he was a MLA and released after two days.

He represents the Dichipalli assembly constituency in Nizamabad district, considered to be a hot spot for Naxalite operations. The blasting of the minister's ancestral house comes close on the heels of a police encounter at Sangojiwadi forest area on October 13 in which PWG's district committee member, a commander and three other extremists were killed.

As many as five incidents involving PWG's attacks on government properties and TDP persons occurred after the October 13 encounter in the district.