Hyderabad: The police worked for 45 days in coordination with various departments to draw up plans for a peaceful and hassle-free Ganesha nimajjanam on Sunday. Hyderabad police commissioner Anjani Kumar on Thursday said that about 25,000 police personnel would be deployed in the city including forces drawn from the law and order, crime, task force, city security wing, SHE teams and Special Branch wings. He said 12 lakh people were expected to participate on the final day of the 11-day festivities. and over 10,000 idols above five feet in height would be immersed in the Hussainsagar.
The main procession route, with the Balapur Ganesh in the lead, will be 18 km long while all the tributary processions would cover 120 km stretch, he said. The city police is keeping on standby two squads of the anti-terror OCTOPUS (Organisation for Counter Terrorist Operations) personnel and 13 teams of Greyhounds to deal with emergency situations.
He said after learning from the experience of those who worked on the immersion of the Khairatabad Ganesha idol, it had been decided that the procession of the 57-foot idol would start at 5.30 am and immersion would be completed by 11.30 am. He said that arrangements had been made for the Matam procession to mark Muharram at Bibi Ka Alawa on Friday. “The Muharram procession mostly covers the south zone area. Special bandobust has been made and forces have been deployed at Rein Bazaar, Charminar, Mir Chowk, Dabeerpura, and Chaderghat police station limits,” Mr Kumar said.
2.5 lakh cameras to monitor procession, festivities
With the video-feed of over 2.5 lakh cameras installed in the city commissionerate limits along with the 450 cameras installed in the main procession route from Balapur to Tank Bund, the Ganesh idol immersion procession will be monitored by the police personnel at three levels-police station, DCP office and the main command control centre at the city police headquarters. The images will also be simultaneously shared with the State police headquarters for additional monitoring.
The main and tributary processions on the final day of the 11-day festival of Ganesh Chaturthi have to pass through about 915 sensitive areas in the city. To prevent any untoward incident during the procession, the city police are deploying rooftop monitoring teams, access control teams besides bomb disposal teams, dog squads, prodders, deep search minor detection, and explosive detectors.
Hyderabad Police Commissioner Mr. Anjani Kumar said, “Based on the previous incidents, the five zonal heads (DCPs) and Joint Commissioner of Special Branch have identified 310 hypersensitive areas and 605 sensitive areas in the city. All these places will have rooftop teams to keep an eye on the happenings and alert the force on the ground. As many as 81 watchtowers have been installed around Tank Bund premises for observation.”
Keeping in view the sensitive nature of the huge congregation of the public on Sunday, the commissioner has appealed to the public to not spread rumours and false reports on social media, which may harm public peace. He warned the trouble mongers to refrain from spreading rumours on WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter. Any person who receives objectionable messages or finds any person sharing such content, can approach the police immediately.
