Hyderabad: A police officer allegedly grabbed two students by their throats while pushing them back during a protest at the Mahabubabad District Collectorate.
The officer appearing in the video that surfaced on Wednesday, August 19, has been identified as Mahabubabad Town Inspector Raghupathi Reddy. It shows Reddy, along with other officers, pushing back polytechnic students who held a protest at the collectorate.
While trying to restrain them, Reddy grabs the throat of a male student and does not let go till the student pushes his hand back and frees himself from the officer’s grip. Reddy then grabs the throat of another male student, this time more deliberately, to push him back.
The video cuts off as police continue their scuffle with the students. Siasat.com hasn’t been able to verify the authenticity of this video.
Polytechnic students protest
Polytechnic students across Telangana escalated their protests this week against the state government’s move to merge polytechnic colleges with ITIs and Apprentice Training Centres under the newly formed Shakti department, with agitations reported in Ramanthapur, Musi Tank Bund, and reportedly in Ramnaspura and Bahadurpura, triggering traffic snarls across several city stretches.
The protests stem from GO 97, issued on July 3, which renamed the Labour, Employment, Training and Factories Department as SHAKTI, short for Skill, Human Capital and Knowledge Training Initiatives, and brought polytechnic colleges under the ambit of the Young India Skill University.
Students say the merger threatens their access to ECET, the lateral-entry scheme that allows diploma holders to join undergraduate engineering programmes directly. Several protesters said the move would effectively force them to repeat Intermediate education if they wanted to pursue a BTech degree, undermining three years of diploma study.
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