Is AP a soft state?

By M H Ahssan

Responding to a query from HNN — right after the Delhi terror attack, a few weeks ago — about the threat of terrorism in the state, chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy said: “We have driven away the Naxalites from the state.” That in a way succinctly describes the perception and mindset of the powersthat-be about the possibility of terrorist strikes in Andhra Pradesh. It also indicates the low priority given by the state government to combating terrorism of the kind that hit Mumbai last week.

This is surprising because Hyderabad has been a victim of terrorism — not once but twice last year. On May 18, last year, devotees were victims of a bomb attack when they came out after reading their Friday namaz. Later on August 25, innocents lost their lives in two near simultaneous bomb blasts on a Saturday evening that targeted Lumbini Park where a laser show was on and Gokul Chat Bhandar where holidaymakers had gathered to eat their favourite snacks.

In a belated move on Friday evening, director general of police S S P Yadav transferred the unsolved Lumbini Park and Mecca Masjid case to the Octopus. But it is a case of too little, too late. The Octopus was established in the wake of the terrorist attacks to provide intelligence and investigate such cases. But the supposed to be specialised agency has remained largely non-functional. For starters, little help came to Octopus in terms of personnel and office establishment — because the then chief of Octopus, a director general level officer A K Mohanty shared cold vibes with many of his other colleagues who were more interested in showing him in bad light.

After Mohanty was shunted out, the post was downgraded and Octopus came under an inspector general of police. But staffing still remains a problem. There are now 200 personnel in Octopus, but it is yet to be a cutting edge agency. “Even though staffers get 50 per cent additional salary in Octopus, nobody wants to join. Thanks to extensive corruption in force, many think that it is better to stay outside in field postings where much more money can be made,” confided a senior cop. He added: “If nobody wants to join an anti-terrorist outfit, how well we can fight terrorism ?”

A major bane in Andhra Pradesh police is intra-departmental politics. It is an open secret in the state police that the department’s two top officials — director general of police S S P Yadav and additional director general of intelligence Aravinda Rao do not see eye to eye and often act in contra directions. “This has led to lot of wranglings and demoralisation down the line,” a senior police officer pointed out.

Additionally, it is believed that a large part of the focus of the Andhra Pradesh intelligence department (like in other states) is on political intelligence. “A significant part of effort is on analysing the prospects of various political parties. Other than this the focus is on naxalism. But very little of it is on gathering intelligence on terrorism of the kind seen today,” police insiders aver.

In a scenario of this kind, the police would act indiscriminately when terror strikes. This is what happened in the aftermath of the Mecca Masjid blast. With no intelligence whatsoever, the police under pressure to crack the case started picking up ‘suspects’ randomly and subjected them to torture. Most of them were not chargesheeted because there was no concrete evidence and others were let off by courts of law. All this resulted in growing anger among the youth and their social circles for targeting them without reason.

Charges of the police being anti-minority also came to fore because all those picked up were Muslims. “The end result was that we ended up in negative territory. We faced flak from all quarters and this is going to act as a dampener in our future efforts,” a senior police officer lamented.