Citizens lament high-handedness of police; question dept's flow of communication

Hyderabad: Chand Ahmed The recent incident of the police beating up food delivery executives has highlighted the severe problem of communication in the department. Most importantly the behaviour of police has sent out a message that the order issued by the State government wasn't read carefully by them. All it took was social media backlash for the department to sit back and review its decision.

The netizens lament the 'high-handedness' of the police and complain about not getting services of Zomato and Swiggy, which they feel were stopped "unnecessarily".

Murali Krishna, an IT employee working from home said, "The main problem with partial lockdown is people have to purchase groceries and essentials within the specified time limit. But many citizens working from home are unable to buy any food products. They are more than happy to order food online. But all of a sudden the outburst of police officers on food delivery boys caused problems to those who are totally dependent on hotel food."

Apart from that, the main issue which came to the fore was that the department itself did not have proper understanding of GO. If the police working on ground would've known it they would have not resorted to high-handedness. This shows that flow of communication from top to bottom is not at all in place, There needs to be a lot of correction in terms of communication flow, said Kranti Kumar, a techie.

He noted, "Though it could be agreed that many delivery boys were misusing privileges of wearing uniform, it does not mean that genuine employees should be harassed. If they are harassed the customer sitting at home stays hungry for the day. Basically, the police should realise that the entire supply chain gets affected because of their high handedness. However, after a lot of backlash from the citizens, the department has ordered again that the delivery boys will not be harassed. But more than half of restaurants have stopped deliveries causing further inconvenience to us."

A policeman, on condition of anonymity, said, "We just follow orders from seniors without even questioning. Also, mostly constables working at ground level are irked with change in daily orders. At times they tend to act as a lone ranger which defames the entire department. Though we have taken all measures to instruct officers that they should follow proper order, sometimes it gets intensified due to constant pressure on them."