Hyderabad, September 23: More than a fortnight ago, when the sleuths carried out a random survey covering nearly a 100 places of worship of different communities across Hyderabad to get the pulse of what they thought about the September 24 verdict on the title suit of Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid issue, they heaved a sigh of relief as the survey showed that not many had serious concerns about the outcome of the verdict.
This was followed by calculations as to which political party would gain mileage if they indulged in anything untoward. The result of this calculations was also nil indicating that at this point in time, no party was in the ‘mood.’ Today, when the Ganesh immersion passed off peacefully and a senior police officer involved in the preparations for the bandobust arrangements for September 24 quoted the Murphy’s law: “If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something,” it indicated that the sleuths are leaving nothing to chance. They have Plan-A, Plan-B and Plan-C in place.
Sources in the police department told Express that the peaceful passing off of Ganesh immersion was an indication that none was in a mood to indulge in any untoward incident. “Tempers are definetly not high going by the peaceful conduct of the immersion. There may be symbolic protests and that is what the available intelligence indicates,” sources said.
Over the last few days, the sleuths discreetly conducted a survey which showed that both communities acknowledged the fact that they could do nothing against the court verdict and will accept it either way. Actually, when the sleuths conducted the survey, not many were aware of the approaching verdict.
Days later, frequent appeals were made in some prominent places of worship not to take law into hands, whatever be the judgment. Innumerable meetings with peace committees, community elders and leaders from all religious groups took place while the police took up preventive arrests of communal offenders.
While media across the country has already promised to exercise maximum restraint while reporting the verdict, the provocative SMSes which were doing the rounds could finally be stopped after the Centre intervened and banned all bulk SMSes for the next 72 hours. Though a close watch is being kept all over the state, especially the Old City of Hyderabad, Nalgonda, Karimnagar and Adilabad districts, known to be communally sensitive, the Hyderabad police reportedly failed to ‘monitor’ the speeches of a certain leader who arrived in Hyderabad today and made some provocative remarks.
“Moreover, intelligence indicates that not a single political party is trying to gain mileage over the verdict and this is a good sign. We are, however, not that bothered about the symbolic protests. Normally, situations goes out of hand if a political party is involved,” a senior police officer remarked.
All the forces which were drawn for the Ganesh immersion bandobust, are being continued for the next two days, without a break. “No nonsense will be tolerated and we will use strong force at the very first instance of violence. Section 144 will also be imposed,” another senior police official said.
-Agencies