The Andhra Pradesh government defended in the Supreme Court its controversial decision to deploy elite anti-Naxatite squad 'Greyhounds' to quell the volatile Telangana agitation in Hyderabad's Osmania University campus on Thursday.
The state said the anti-Naxalite force is deployed not only for tackling the Left wing extremism but also to assist other law and order enforcing agencies at times of exigencies but without using the sophisticated anti-gureilla warfare equipment.
The state took the stance in an affidavit in response to the apex court's direction to explain how and why the 'Greyhounds' were deployed to quell the students' unrest and whether such force is used for combating political rallies and movements.
"Though the Greyhounds personnel are deployed primarily on anti-Naxal duties, they are also occasionally deployed on general law and order duties whenever mammoth events take place.
"Greyhounds teams are equipped with sophisticated fire arms when deployed on anti-Naxal duties while they are provided with only riot gear when deployed on general law and order/crowd management," the state said.
According to the state, it had to deploy the Greyhounds in the university campus and other places in Hyderabad city due to paucity of adequate forces to prevent the situation going out of control.
"The Greyhounds is deployed in such a role essentially to supplement the available forces. Whenever they are deployed in this role, they do not carry firearms and they are deployed only with riot gear such as lathis, stone guard, teargas ammunition and rubber bullets.
"The Greyhounds also had to be deployed to supplement the already deployed forces to maintain law and order. Thus, the decision to deploy Greyhounds was taken consciously after exhausting all available forces. The deployment was done on a requisition given by the Commissioner of Police, Hyderabad, and on the instructions of the director general of police, Andhra Pradesh," it said.
However, the Greyhounds was not deployed on a continuous basis and had been stationed there from time to time based on the necessity. In the case of the Telangana agitation, the force was mainly used to act as a deterrent to perpetrators of violence, the government said.
"Care was also taken to ensure that the Greyhounds were briefed exhaustively to maintain maximum restraint while dealing with the agitators.
The deployment of force in the Osmania University campus has been done on the basis of intelligence inputs and on the basis of the requirement of forces depending on the calls being made by the Joint Action Committee of OU students as also certain political leaders for specific events such as holding of meetings and rallies in the campus and laying of siege to the assembly.
The decision to deploy Greyhounds in Osmania University campus was not malafide and was done in the face of acute shortage of manpower, the state added.