Muslims help in Ganesh farewell

Hyderabad: For the first time, hundreds of Muslims volunteers were on the ground to help police oversee the Ganesh nimajjanam in the old city. The city police had provided them special blue-coloured uniforms and a brief training session on crowd control.

Senior officials said the gesture of these youngsters would establish communal harmony in the sensitive old city. South Zone DCP V. Satyanarayana said this was part of community policing and would help the youngsters to empathise with police.

The initiative was aimed at bringing the two communities together. The police had teamed up with a group of Hindu youngsters to clean up after Bakrid. In earlier years, activists from political parties like the MIM and some Muslim organisations had lent a hand for the Ganesh procession. All the volunteers are aspiring to join the police.

“We have more than 1,000 volunteers and most of them are Muslim youngsters. These youth had earlier joined us for the free training programme. Before we started planning for the security arrangements, we happened to interact with them and most of them showed their willingness to work on the procession day as volunteers. Since it can help them empathise with our work, we encouraged them to be a part of the force,” said Mr. Satyanarayana. He added that the youngsters would also get a taste of what it is to be a cop on crowd control duty.

Several volunteers were present at Balapur and at Charminar, while many were deployed along the procession route. Teams of youngsters were allotted to station house officers. Md Khizaruddin, 27, from Doodhbowli, said, “We have been undergoing training for one-and-a-half months for the recruitment exam. This is an opportunity for us to practice whatever we learned,” he said, adding that he hope to bridge gap between the two communities through such gestures.

Syed Maqbool, 24, said, “It has taught us that not just physical strength and stamina but also a lot of patience is required to be policeman. To control crowds is not easy especially those who are in a festive mood. But the people have been cooperative.”