Miscreants loot Khairatabad laddu

HYDERABAD: Miscreants made off with huge chunks of the famous Khairatabad Ganesh laddu on Friday, dejecting thousands of people waiting for the laddu in serpentine queues from early morning.
Witnesses and police said about 20,000 people had gathered by 9.30 am for a portion of the state’s biggest six-tonne laddu, which was offered to the gigantic Ganesh idol.Like every year, organizers had asked people to come and take home the prasadam distributed for free.
But all hell broke loose when devotees noticed that some locals and miscreants carried away huge chunks of the laddu in gunny bags, each weighing nearly 25 kg. “How can they do this to us. We have been waiting for hours and people are just sneaking in and taking the laddu away,” said S Rama, a housewife.
PVVS Mallikarjuna Rao, a confectioner from Tapeswaram village in East Godavari district, had offered the jumbo laddu weighing around 6,000 kg.
But the Khairatabad Ganesh Utsav Committee stopped distribution of the laddu after donating about 1,000 kg due to the chaos at around 11.30 am.
As Friday was a holiday on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti, there was unprecedented crowd in Khairatabad. In view of the huge surge of devotees, the police diverted the queue into bylanes of Khairatabad, as a result of which traffic was disrupted in many areas between 8 am and 12 pm.

(L) A man gets away with a sackful of laddu as people standing in long queues watch. (R) A person who suffered injuries in lathicharge, being taken to hospital for treatment.
As per the agreement between utsav committee and laddu donor, half of the laddu (nearly 3,000 kgs) was supposed to be distributed and the remaining half of the laddu (another 3,000 kg) was supposed to be distributed in the East Godavari district.
But Rao had to leave for Tapeswaram with only a few hundred kg of the laddu as local thugs looted the laddu prasadam and strangely the organisers and the police did not stop them.
Interestingly, the police too were seen carrying huge chunks of the laddu in polythene bags from the laddu distribution bowl.
As the situation went out of hand, police asked committee members to stop laddu distribution, fearing a stampede. The DCP, Central Zone, V Kamalasan Reddy, who arrived at the venue along with other cops, dispersed the mob.
“The lives of devotees are our prime concern and our duty is to prevent a stampede. We have asked the Ganesh Utsav committee to send laddu prasadam to the temples and get it distributed through temple committees,” said Kamalasan Reddy. The police also resorted to a mild lathi charge to disperse the crowd.
Many devotees expressed their anguish over the decision. “We are totally upset and we are returning home without taking laddu prasadam. What happened today was outrageous,” said a devotee.
Meanwhile, a few people even chased the truck carrying the laddu to Tapeswaram and took away some portions of the laddu by threatening the truck driver on Hayathnagar outskirts.