With T served, cops get back on crime trails

Following the decision to carve out a separate Telangana, police in the city are a bit relaxed and the city incident-free.

Hitherto, whenever a decision was spelt out on Telangana, outbreak of violence in different parts of the city would be imminent, keeping police on tenterhooks. Even earlier this week, as the Congress was about to announce its decision, the police were on standby, geared to meet any eventuality.

“Having tackled several sudden outbursts of anger over government decisions in the past three years, our first reaction would have been to tell our men to keep stone-guards and tear gas shells ready,” an officer of the Osmania University police station said. From Wednesday evening, they required nothing of those.

“Surely, we are a bit relaxed though there is the burden of security arrangements for Bonalu,” smiled OU Inspector P. Ashok. But the time is also to focus more on regular policing like crime prevention and detection.

The history

Interesting, OU police station registered the highest number of criminal cases (210) pertaining to the agitation. Protests began on the evening of December 1, 2009 with students taking out a mock funeral procession of TRS supremo KCR when he called off his fast-unto-death.

Since then, scores of violent incidents, marches, processions and bandhs have kept the police busy.

“It is time for us to concentrate on chain snatchers, unsolved crimes and completion of investigation in pending cases,” say the city police.