Hyderabad cops create crisis at AP border

TS lures people with ‘pass’ to travel to destination of their choice as AP cops stop them from entering

In a flagrant violation of the nation-wide lockdown for 21 days in less than 24 hours, Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Wednesday put lives of thousands of people at extreme risk by sending them away from the various hostels in the state capital city of Hyderabad to far-off places in neighbouring states, mainly Andhra Pradesh.

The Telangana government created a humanitarian crisis by luring people with passes to travel to destination of their choice, barely a day after a nationwide lockdown was announced.

The most glaring dimension of this tragic saga is that several girl students and working women had to travel nearly 200 km on twowheelers in their eagerness to reach their native place, even as Telangana police issued passes to “those who have their own means of transport”.

The crisis deepened further with neighbouring Andhra Pradesh police stopping them from entering their jurisdiction, thereby resulting in a mass gathering of evacuees, stranded on roads till late at night, defeating the very objective of the heath emergency-led lockdown — social distancing. Serpentine queues of four-wheelers and two-wheelers were seen at the Garikapadu check post on the HyderabadVijayawada highway and at Panchalingala checkpost near Kurnool on the Hyderabad-Bangalore highway.

Women pleaded with police to leave them as they have to travel 100 km further to reach their destinations.

— TEJO ROY People from Andhra Pradesh being stopped at the inter-state border shared with Telangana after it was closed by district rural police at Vijayapuri south, on Wednesday. They were returning from Hyderabad and other places of Telangana State following the lockdown announced all over the country on Tuesday.