CM asked to check Octopus wrangling

TNN / Mar 8, 2008, 03:29 IST

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This is even as the chief minister is disgusted at the state of affairs in the police department and has commented so to close colleagues.

HYDERABAD: Shaken by the warfare in the police department and tenuous relations amongst senior officers, the home department is seeking the intervention of the chief minister and the chief secretary to sort out issues relating to the police force.
This is even as the chief minister is disgusted at the state of affairs in the police department and has commented so to close colleagues.
Highly placed sources told TOI that principal home secretary P V Naidu - himself a police official - is seeking a high-level meeting early next week to discuss some specific disputes in the force and convey displeasure at the state of affairs.
The meeting is also expected to take a stand on the functioning of the Octopus. There is a growing feeling within the police force that the dispute has put the future of Octopus in jeopardy and is having a negative impact on the morale of the junior officers, who are looking askance.

In the eye of the storm are director general of police S S P Yadav and director general of Octopus A K Mohanty.
But the name of additional director general of intelligence K Aravind Rao is also figuring indirectly in the dispute.
The immediate cause of dispute is the fashion in which Octopus, the newly formed anti-terrorist force, will be run. "In all this infighting, Octopus has not taken off the ground.
And this is strange in view of the lurking danger of global terrorism that looms large over the state, particularly Hyderabad", said a disturbed police officer.

Mohanty has dashed a note to the home department that the GO that forms the basis for the creation of Octopus should be amended so as to make it independent of the director general of police.
It is on paper not independent, because when it was conceived a few months ago, the thinking was that Octopus should be headed by an additional DG.
But now that an officer of DG rank - like him had been appointed, the organisation should be made independent, is Mohanty's contention. But in order to rein in Mohanty, the powers that be in the police department had stymied the operations of the fledgling organisation, not providing it with money, men or material.
"It's like throwing the baby out with the bathwater," said an analyst.

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