HYDERABAD: It has been over a year since the horrific Disha gang-rape, and the Telangana police is working day and night to ensure something like it doesn’t happen again. Recently, a 35-year-old woman, Gajjala Lakshmi Reddy, took to social media to laud the patrolling efforts of the police, and thanked them for ensuring she got to her destination safe and sound at night.
Lakshmi landed in Hyderabad from Delhi late on Wednesday night, and was en route Tirupati via road. As her car reached Shadnagar, one of its tires got punctured. Incidentally, she was near the same area where Disha was brutally raped and murdered.
In a Facebook post that went viral within hours, she wrote: “I could remember all the media reports about the Disha incident. Holding my cell phone as a torch as the driver fixed the tyre, I felt helpless. Suddenly, a car from behind stopped, leaving me startled.” To her relief, it was the Shadnagar police station’s patrolling vehicle - SI Ramachandra’s team of policemen. “We saw both of them struggling on the road trying to fix the car tyre. As it was cold, we asked Lakshmi to get back inside the car. We then helped the driver fix the tyre. In the next 10-15 minutes, the car was up and running,” said constable M Musheed.
In her Facebook post, Lakshmi expressed her gratitude to the patrolling officials, Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and the Telangana police department for their efforts in improving women’s safety in the State.
“Since the Disha incident in Shamshabad, we have been more careful, and constantly on our toes. We do not want such incidents to happen again. In this regard, four new patrolling vehicles have been put in place with 24-hour patrolling teams working in two different shifts of 12 hours. They patrol highways and the city outskirts,” said SI Ramachandra.