Hyderabad: The Telangana police have been successful in ensuring that Maoists do not gain a foothold in the State by foiling their repeated attempts to enter it during 2022, a top official said on Thursday.
Anti-extremist operations continued to achieve notable success within and outside the State and tremendous results were achieved this year, Telangana Director General of Police (DGP) M Mahender Reddy told reporters here.
Timely dissemination of information led to three exchanges of fire (EoF) in which three important cadres were neutralised, he said.
As many as 120 extremists, including those belonging to CPI (Maoist), CPI (ML) Jana Shakti, among others, were arrested while 32 extremists holding different positions and other cadres of the CPI (Maoist) surrendered, he said.
Assault teams were deployed in the extremist-afflicted districts of Telangana and border areas of Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra and 83 field operations (76 in Telangana and 7 inter-State operations) were conducted, Reddy said.
Greyhounds (the elite anti-Naxal force of Telangana police) continued to achieve notable success in the anti-extremist operations, he said adding the Greyhounds’ units traced and destroyed several booby traps and recovered various types of arms and ammunition, land mines and bombs, among others, in various operations.
“The Telangana government’s endeavour has been to make the State Maoist-free. Accordingly, we thwarted Maoists’ repeated attempts to infiltrate into the State,” said the police chief.
He appreciated the efforts of Superintendents of Police (SPs) Commissioners of Police (CPs) and police staff of inter-State border districts.
“We have also involved citizens in our efforts to ensure the Maoists were not provided shelter. We have taken the people along in our efforts and gained their trust,” Reddy said.
He said in communally-sensitive places like Hyderabad, Nirmal, Bhainsa, Karimnagar, Nizamabad, Nalgonda, Medak, and Sangareddy, officials worked day and night and with the involvement of people ensured not a single communal incident was reported.
The DGP further said Telangana saw an increase in overall crime by 4.44% in the current year when compared to 2021 with a total of 1,42,917 cases registered during 2022 as against 1,36,841 cases in 2021. The rise in cases was attributed to a 57% increase in cybercrime.
A total of 13,895 cybercrime cases were registered this year as against 8,839 cases in 2021. The overall convictions rate increased to 56 per cent this year as against 50% the previous year.
On crime against women, 17,908 cases were registered in 2022 as against 17,253 cases in 2021. The cases have shown an increase of 3.8% and the rise in cases was mainly due to an increase of 8 per cent under dowry harassment and 40% in bigamy.
A total of 2,126 rape cases were registered during this year. The cases that have been analysed to ascertain the offender’s relation and proximity to a rape victim, revealed that rapes were committed by unknown accused persons in nine cases only. In the remaining (2,117) cases victims were raped by close family members/friends/lovers/colleagues.
A total of 2,432 POCSO cases was registered in 2022 as against 2,567 the previous year.
The DGP said overall 10,25,849 CCTV cameras were installed across the state to date, of which 1,74,205 cameras were installed during this year. During the year, 18,234 cases were detected with the help of CCTVs, Reddy added.
