‘Lifting of cases will take a month’

Hyderabad, December 31: Pointing out that the withdrawal of cases against pro-Telangana activists is a time taking process, Director General of Police K Aravinda Rao today said it would take at least one month to withdraw all the 1,667 cases registered against students across the state.

“The district SP will first have to consult the public prosecutor and then send proposals to us. After processing the proposals, we will send them to the government which in turn will consult legal experts.

Later, a GO has to be issued for each case. It will take at least a month to complete the process,” the DGP explained.

He reiterated that there would be no blanket GO for withdrawal of all the cases. Proposals were sent to withdraw 383 cases, while 182 cases were closed by the police themselves.

Asked to comment on what the police thought about withdrawal of cases, the DGP said he would not like to comment on policy matters. At a press conference here, the state police chief said so far 50 companies of CPMF had arrived, though they sought more companies to face any eventuality in the wake of submission of Srikrishna Committee report.

”The CPMF, especially the CRPF, is trained to shoot. But we are sensitising them and they have been instructed to maintain restraint. We are using less lethal weapons,” he said.

When asked to elaborate what he meant by less lethal weapons, Rao refused to go into details, but added that rubber bullets would be used. ”We will be procuring nonlethal weapons as well. We have developed our own mechanism. We have our drill manual, which is quite old, and we have brought about some changes and modernised it in accordance with the present requirements,” he said, adding that normally rifles are used all over the country and they are not completely phasing them out.

To a query on the police preparedness, Rao, who initially remarked that he needs to be guarded in making remarks, later said they were preparing themselves as per the reports appearing in the media on Telangana issue. ”We are also preparing based on the experiences last year when violence broke out in the state.”

With regard to huge deployment of forces in Telangana districts, the DGP said it was based on the number of cases registered during the violent protests last year. ”Wherever we came across large number of cases and high level of violence took place, there is more deployment of forces in those places and it is incorrect to say that deployment in certain districts is huge,” he said.

The DGP, however, added that there was no need to panic as the groups which want to agitate on T issue, promised to carry out their protests in a democratic manner.

–Agenciees