Four months after the Tuni arson, the Crime Investigation Department (CID) police who are investigating the case, started arresting the accused involved in the violence.
Director-General of Police J.V. Ramudu, at a press conference held here on Monday, said the police had arrested six persons responsible for the violence at Tuni in East Godavari district. On January 31, even as the Kapu Maha Sabha demanding inclusion of Kapus in the list of Backward Classes (BCs) was in progress, miscreants attacked the Tuni Rural and Urban Police stations, set Ratnachal Express on fire and roughed up some police personnel.
The miscreants ransacked the Tuni railway station and torched several vehicles at different places in the town. CID sleuths identified about 500 persons who perpetrated the violence.
Call data
“We started picking up the accused in the Tuni case. On Monday, six accused from East Godavari and other districts were arrested. The arrests were made with scientific evidence such as CCTV footages, video clippings, cell phone towers and call data of the accused,” the DGP said. The police are hunting for the other accused identified in the surveillance cameras at the venue in Tuni. Teams were despatched to different places in the State to nab them, it is learnt.
In addition to the CID, the Railway Protection Force (RPF) and the Government Railway Police (GRP) also registered cases for damaging railway properties, ransacking the station and creating violence. The investigation is under progress.
The State government has given clearance for filling 6,000 posts in the department, Mr. Ramudu said. He put the number of vacancies at 14,000. “There is acute shortage of manpower and division of some wings is yet to be completed. About 3,000 personnel from the Andhra Pradesh Special Police were allotted to the State, but were not given orders. There is no academy for training the new recruits,” the DGP said. Despite these constraints, the force is performing well in tackling Maoist activity in the Andhra-Odisha Border (AOB) area and maintaining law and order, he said.
The Police Department would shift to Velagapudi once infrastructure, accommodation and other facilities are in place, he added.
Additional DGP R.P. Thakur and City Police Commissioner D. Gautam Sawang were among those present.
The arrests were made with scientific evidence such as CCTV footages, says DGP
