It was anything but a dull Saturday morning for over 1,000 schoolchildren who screamed and cheered on during the visual display of ‘protests’ and how the police tackles such situations at the ‘open house’ programme conducted by the city police here at the Parade Grounds on the occasion of Police Commemoration Day which is on October 21.
The huge crowd of girls and boys of different age groups from various public and private schools from Secunderabad, Hyderabad and Ranga Reddy districts, were constantly on their toes as they watched policemen on horsebacks and riot gear disperse a group of ‘protesters’ as part of the drill to show school children as to how violent situations are controlled.
The programme also had the Hyderabad traffic police, the Border Security Force (BSF), City Security Wing (CSW) displaying all the equipments they use for public view. All the children and participants present queued up in long lines to talk and interact with police personnel at the programme. “It is actually nice to see the police friendly like this for once, as most of the time we are taught to be afraid of the police,” said B Akshay, a ninth standard student from a public school.
Another school teacher from a private school mentioned that the visuals shown by the traffic police from footage collected from CCTV cameras was really an eye-opener for her students, who were shocked to see the kind of accidents that take place in the city when people do not follow traffic rules. “The accidents were so horrible. I made sure that I cleared all of my doubts after speaking to the traffic inspectors who were present at the programme,” said P Anjana, a tenth standard student.
Anurag Sharma, commissioner, Hyderabad police, said that last year a total of 576 police personnel had lost their lives in the line of duty, and that the police are always engaged in maintaining peace in the city. Anjani Kumar, additional commissioner of police; Amit Garg, additional commissioner of police (traffic); and deputy commissioners of the different zones in the city were also present at the programme.