OU turns battlefield

The APNGOs-sponsored rally in the city on Saturday transformed Osmania University campus into a battlefield, with OU JAC students having violent confrontation with policemen while barrelling their way to the LB Stadium in order to register protest against the meet. Tension pervaded the campus as 100-strong students resorted to stone pelting when the police started lobbing teargas shells.

After two hours of peaceful efforts to penetrate the dual-layered police cordon, the students tried to storm their way out of the campus. They had also organised a motorcycle rally, which, however, was disallowed beyond the NCC Gate.

In the melee, a constable fractured his arm, while a photo-journalist from AFP sustained an injury on his forehead and a reporter of an English daily sustained minor injuries on his right hand.

Many groups of students, belonging to different organisations and departments, sought to go out of the campus, but their efforts proved futile, as all the entrances of the campus were shut. The agitated students made repeated attempts to come out of the university, but were halted in their tracks by cops.

Five platoons of APSP and three companies of the Rapid Action Force were among the security personnel deployed in and around the campus. They included three ACPs, five CIs and 15 Sub-Inspectors deployed at vantage points on and around the campus. The entire stretch from Tarnaka flyover to AMS Hospital was blanketed with heavy security.

Later, irate students slammed the DGP V Dinesh Reddy and Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy for ignoring the aspirations of the people of Telangana. They burnt effigies of the Chief Minister and also faulted a section of the media for portraying students in bad light.

The campus reverberated with slogans like, ‘CM down down’, ‘Police go back’, ‘DGP down down’, ‘Khabardar khabardar Ashok Babu’, near the NCC Gate. The police tried to reason with leaders of some students’ organisations who were summoned to meet a top cop belonging to the west zone, but the students began singing songs and later staged a sit-in. The students stayed put at the NCC Gate up to 4 pm. The security personnel were later withdrawn at 7 pm. J Rajan Rathan Kumar, ACP, Kacheguda, said cases would be registered against some students.