Hyderabad: Police Commissioner Anjani Kumar defends frisking of suspects

Hyderabad: City Police Commissioner Anjani Kumar on Thursday said that if a police officer on field finds someone to be suspicious, he has the right to frisk and check the person's belongings.

He was responding to a video that went viral claiming that police officers were checking messages of citizens on their mobile phones and frisking them unwantedly for any drug-related SMS.

Anjani Kumar said "the biggest university of today's time is WhatsApp University. Unfortunately everyone wants to be a part of this university. Irony is India has beaten China to take admission to WhatsApp University despite their being good universities such as Oxford, Yale, Delhi, JNU, OU and others. It is really sad to see that citizens are blindly believing whatever is appearing in messages on WhatsApp without even caring to verify facts. They just believe the copy-paste messages wherein a video and photo are posted with false content; entire message is taken out of context."

He added that "police officers are bound to check any belongings of suspicious persons, rowdy sheeters, drug addicts, notorious offenders, burglars, besides all such persons who are involved in one crime or another, have their associates in society who are roaming free and they keep communicating with one another. Now, if a police officer does not frisk or check a person there are chances that the offender might plan something big or might also keep on absconding forever. It is very important for police to question any suspicious person. If required, frisking is important to avoid any untoward incident."

Quoting a recent incident, the commissioner stated, "a few months ago a police constable was on regular checking duty. When he stopped a person, he asked his name and details before letting him go. He turned out to be a rowdy-sheeter; he took out a knife and stabbed the constable. The incident occurred in the North Zone area a few months ago. Had he frisked the person he would have been safe and the latter would have been detained for carrying a knife."