Hyderabad, December 01: Students of the Osmania University went on the rampage on Monday damaging half-a-dozen police vehicles, several private vehicles and ransacking commercial establishments. All this in front of a strong contingent of policemen who watched in mute resignation.
Though the TRS-sponsored bandh was near total in the city and its outskirts, it turned violent in the campus and several buses were damaged in other parts of the city.
If it was police excess that created a stir among the student and civil society alike on Sunday, the same policemen watched the students go berserk inside and outside the university campus on Monday.
A warning sign on the middle of the road at the campus entrance near the OU police station read: ‘Police: No Entry’. A few feet away from it were the words inscribed on the road: ‘Police No Entry, Do or Die’. Not a single policemen entered the premises and those who did in plainclothes, were thrashed by the angry students.
Though a huge posse of policemen was deployed outside the campus, not a single policemen budged even as the rampaging students broke the window panes of more than five police vehicles and even overturned a police van at the Tarnaka crossroads. The police sub-control at the crossroads came under heavy stone pelting and it was attacked with vengeance.
It was not that the policemen were outnumbered. Orders from higher-ups kept them in their silent state, sources said.
Scores of private vehicles with children and women in them were also attacked by the students who moved in and outside the campus with tree branches and lathis in their hands.
Several passengers suffered injuries, though minor, in the attacks on the four-wheelers.
After assembling at the Arts College, thousands of students came out of the University premises to enforce bandh by the commercial establishments on Monday morning. Once they were out of the campus, they went berserk.
Wielding lathis and branches, they damaged advertisement boards and uprooted them along with their cement bases from the medians and attacked every vehicle that came by. They dislodged iron barricades, attacked the University petrol filling station and damaged it. “We went to a nearby hotel for breakfast and by the time we returned, the mob ransacked the petrol filling station,” KM Ramesh Prasad, who works in the filling station said.
The students spread themselves out in all directions, towards Uppal, Secunderabad and Lalapet creating terror in their enthusiasm to enforce a bandh. The Big Bazar at Tarnaka and several other commercial establishments came under attack even as they were kept closed. Media vehicles were also attacked.
And this rampage went for more than an hour even as police including senior officers like East Zone DCP Stephen Ravindra, Task Force DCP V B Kamalasan Reddy and Ravindranath Babu watched.
Surprisingly, the three officers were the ones who took part in Sunday’s police action against the students.
–Agencies–