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Hyderabad commissioner shunts 85 cops of a police station for dereliction of duty
The SHO of the police station was suspended on January 2 for allegedly helping the son of a former BRS lawmaker to escape a drunk driving case and implicating another driver in the case
Hyderabad police commissioner Kothakota Srinivas Reddy on Wednesday issued orders transferring 85 police personnel from a single police station on charges of dereliction of duty, people familiar with the matter said.
Starting from sub-inspectors and assistant sub-inspectors to home guards working in the high-profile police station of Punjagutta in the centre of Hyderabad, all the police officials were transferred and asked to report at the City Armed Reserve (CAR) headquarters.
“Senior police officials drawn from other police stations are being posted at Punjagutta,” a police official in the Hyderabad police Commissionerate said.
Station house officer (SHO) of Panjagutta police station B Durga Rao was already suspended on January 2 for allegedly helping Mohammad Amer Rahel, son of former Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) lawmaker Mohamad Shakeel Ahmed, to escape a drunk driving case and implicating another driver in the case.
Rahel, who later escaped from the police station and fled to Dubai, was found to have driven his BMW car, which rammed into the barricades at Praja Bhavan, the erstwhile residential bungalow of BRS president and former chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao at Begumpet, on December 24.
During a probe by senior officials, it was revealed from the mobile phone data records that Rahel had a conversation with Durga Rao, who implicated the former’s driver Abdul Aarif in the case and named him in the first information report (FIR).
A Congress leader familiar with the matter said the state government had received specific information that the police officials in Panjagutta police station were still taking instructions from BRS leaders.
“There is a suspicion that these cops were also passing on information about the movements of the Congress leaders to the BRS leaders. Hence, the mass transfers,” the Congress leader said.
There was no immediate reaction from the BRS leaders.
In January 2018, Panjagutta police station was adjudged the second-best police station in the country by the Union ministry of home affairs, with RS Puram police station in Coimbatore bagging the first position. The ministry ranked police stations across the country based on 360 parameters.
