Telangana clear of Maoists, says DGP

Naveen S Garewal
Tribune News Service
Hyderabad, December 30

The Telangana Police claimed to have eradicated Maoists from the state completely, even though they marked their presence in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh (AP) where a sitting MLA and a former MLC were gunned down on the Andhra-Odisha border in September. 

Over a 120 terrorist had been arrested and 10 surrendered to the police during 2018, the state Director General of Police (DGP) M. Mahendar Reddy said today.

The police chief told The Tribune that his force was confident of having contained the left wing extremists in the state, while they had strong presence in neighbouring Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh on the north and eastern borders of Telangana. "The elections were successfully held without any incident even though the Maoists had called for a boycott and bandh at many places".

DGP Reddy said a close eye was being kept on the extremists and the state intelligence infrastructure had been strengthened because in case of any laxity there is always a possibility of their coming back. 

Senior police officers disclosed that the Telangana State Committee of outlawed Communist Party of India (Maoist) was operating in the neighbouring states is operating with some cadres out of which a handful belong to Telangana.

Earlier giving details about the crime in the state, he said 16 encounters took place between the security agencies and Maoist in which 21 extremists were neutralised. The Telangana police arrested 120 extremists and seized 47 firearms, including one AK-47 rifle and 5 Insas rifles during 2018. Ten extremists also surrendered during the year.

The police chief claimed there had been an overall reduction in crime in the state. He spoke in terms of percentages and said there was a 5 per cent reduction in overall crime, 7 per cent reduction in crime against women, incidents of chain snatching dropped by 43 per cent, rapes fell by 11 per cent and the kidnapping were lower by 19 percent in comparison to last year. However there has been a slight increase in crime against Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST).

To check crime the police would in the next three years install around 15 lakh CCTVs across the state out of this 10 lakh CCTVs will be installed in Hyderabad city. "CCTVs will be installed in every village in the state and modernisation of all the police stations will be done in the coming days," he said.