Hyderabad, December 25: Osmania University campus, as expected, turned into a warzone as students fought pitched battles with police when they were prevented from stepping out of the campus on the suspicion that they might indulge in violence. Police had to lob tear gas shells to quell the students who ran from one part of the campus to the other to break the police cordon and slip out.
It all started when hundreds of students of Potti Sriramulu Telugu University, rechristened by them as Komaram Bheem Telugu University, took out a mock funeral procession of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Union Home Minister P Chidambaram on the campus. Even as the police tried to obstruct the procession at the Arts College, they proceeded towards the OU police station where again they were blocked.
The students then entered into a heated argument with the police, and some of them managed to slip out and head towards the Old PG hostel. They reached the A-cricket stadium and tried in vain to scale the boundary wall and the fence erected by the police.
Caged on the campus, the students then started raining stones on the cops forcing them to lob a couple of tear gas shells and make them retreat. They then chased the students into the campus and cordoned them off.
Meanwhile, some students started attacking the police with stones from the adjacent Old PG hostel and they were almost cornered as more attacks followed from the narrow bylanes. At one stage, the police had to enter the hostels to disperse the students.
Inspector General of Police RS Praveen Kumar, who was supervising the security at the campus, and several other constables were injured in the attacks.
“This is the price we are paying for being patient,” Praveen Kumar said and told the students to refrain from attacks as it would lead to severe retaliation. Though police maintained restraint all through even as the students went berserk, at one point of time, they had to warn the students of opening fire if they did not calm down.
Normalcy returned only after a group of students persuaded the agitators to return to their hostels.
Meanwhile, tension prevailed on the Basheerbagh road when police caned a group of students from Nizam College when the latter tried to forcibly take out a rally beyond the permitted limits. The students took permission only to go in a procession from the hostel to the college.
The students, who ran towards their hostel, gathered at the petrol pump near Basheerbagh flyover and rained stones on the police. Additional police teams rushed in from the Old Police Control Room trapping the students in between. It took over 45 minutes for the cops to restore normalcy by chasing the students into their hostels.
Protestors target Jamia Osmania station
Pro-Telangana activists attacked an MMTS train and removed the fish plates of the tracks near the Jamia Osmania railway station on Thursday as part of the 48-hour bandh call forcing the railway authorities to suspend train services between Secunderabad and Kacheguda.
Hundreds of BJP and TRS activists reached the Jamia Osmania railway station and placed boulders on the tracks forcing an MMTS train and a locomotive engine to halt at the station. They then rained stones on the train damaging window panes. They also damaged the sign boards and the reservation counter in the station.
The protestors tried to set ablaze the control room inside the station failing which they damaged the signalling system causing hindrance to the movement of trains.
As the police reached there, the activists fled the scene but not before removing the fish plates on the track between the Arts College and Jamia Osmania railway stations.
Meanwhile, some activists set fire to the railway booking counter at Lalaguda and damaged the furniture.
–IANS–