“The police just stopped me and took a snap [of me], I asked for the reason twice and they replied, simply like that,” K Prudhvi Raj, a corporate employee living in Hyderabad’s Attapur, told MediaNama. Raj was returning home from his night shift, and at 2:30 am on November 5, the police near his house in Mekalmandi took a picture of him and his vehicle without providing any reason. He told MediaNama that since the police’s response was “improper” he decided to tweet about the incident. “I also need an explanation on what basis these activities are done with a common man. Is this announced in public before the department does it?” he asked in his tweet. https://twitter.com/Kprudhviraj3/status/1191466949022109696 “Hopefully the data in their records will not be misutilised,” he said. Raj is not the only person whose picture has been taken by police in Hyderabad. Police in the city have been asking for the facial data and fingerprints of people who they think might be potential criminals. They are projecting this as a legitimate way to curb crime. We previously reported on one such instance from Falaknuma police station, and were told that “the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) even gives us [the police] the right to kill. Fingerprint is not that big an issue”. Since then, people have reported of this practise by the police in at least 6 different police station jurisdictions of Hyderabad. Reported instances have been from Falaknuma, Bhavaninagar, Chilkalguda, Banjara Hills, Asif Nagar and Chatrinaka…
Please subscribe to MediaNama. Don't share prints and PDFs.
You May Also Like
News
Google has released a Google Travel Trends Report which states that branded budget hotel search queries grew 179% year over year (YOY) in India, in...
Advert
135 job openings in over 60 companies are listed at our free Digital and Mobile Job Board: If you’re looking for a job, or...
News
By Aroon Deep and Aditya Chunduru You’re reading it here first: Twitter has complied with government requests to censor 52 tweets that mostly criticised...
News
Rajesh Kumar* doesn’t have many enemies in life. But, Uber, for which he drives a cab everyday, is starting to look like one, he...