Published Sep 18, 2026 | 11:13 AM ⚊ Updated Sep 18, 2026 | 11:13 AM
Telangana police. (Wikimedia)
Synopsis: More and more examples of the police state in action are emerging in Telangana each passing day. Even the wife of a dead outsourcing worker, Kiran, was not spared at his funeral. This kind of police state did not begin with the Revanth Reddy government. But is it worsening?
In the Congress rule being carried on in the name of “restoration of democracy” in Telangana, more and more examples of the police state in action are emerging each passing day.
The opposition’s protest on the opening day of the Assembly session over the government’s failures during its thousand days in office; the excessive force displayed by the police in preventing opposition members from entering the Assembly premises; the confrontation and exchange of words that followed; the Congress call for a chavu dappu demonstration outside the residence of the Leader of the Opposition; the excesses once again displayed by the police along that route; the cases foisted by the police against BRS protesters; and the allegations and counter-allegations between the Congress and the BRS—all these happened as a matter of course.
But subsequently, several other developments have taken place, and are still taking place, which demonstrate that Congress rule has turned Telangana into even more of a police state.
In connection with the cases registered during the protests, opposition leader KTR’s PRO and PA were summoned to the police station for investigation. Though there was no breach of law serious enough for them to be called to the police station on a festival day, they were kept there for several hours. Subsequently, a story circulated that some masked men entered the police station and, in the presence of the police, attempted to attack the two men and abused them verbally. BRS leaders are asking whether these masked men were Congress goons or policemen who had come in disguise. The police say that the men had come seeking permission for Ganesh pandals and became angry after seeing KTR’s followers.
The BRS demanded that an FIR be registered because it was a crime for anyone to enter a police station and attempt to attack persons who were under police custody and being questioned.
After four or five hours of arguments, the police not only failed to register an FIR over the incident, but arrested the very BRS leaders who had demanded that an FIR be registered.
There are several videos and reels circulating about this entire episode. The versions of the ruling party and the opposition may differ. Each side can narrate every incident in whatever way suits them. The truth may also lie somewhere in between rather than entirely with either side.
But two things are noteworthy. The police quite clearly acted on behalf of the ruling party and in the interests of the ruling party. And the opposition leaders, being arrested, reportedly said, “We will come to power tomorrow. We will write down all your names and see to it that you are dealt with. Be careful.”
In other words, neither side has any respect for the law or for the rule of law. There is certainly no conception within the police that, whoever may be in power, the police system must function impartially, lawfully and in the interests of the people, protecting the Constitution. Nor do the political parties have such a conception.
While this political confrontation was going on, another example of the police state, of brutality and of unlawful conduct came to light elsewhere. This one concerned the death of an outsourcing employee.
For decades, all political parties have been saying that outsourcing employees will be made permanent, that the outsourcing system will be abolished and that these employees will be recognised as government employees. Yet for decades, numerous jobs have continued under the outsourcing system. Outsourcing agencies belong to ruling-party and opposition legislators, officials and wealthy people. In recent times, running an outsourcing agency has become a profitable occupation for people belonging to rich and powerful circles.
Every government office, department and activity has some requirement for outsourcing, large or small—or such requirements are created by officials themselves—and the agency is then handed over to a crony. These outsourcing agencies provide no real service to the government, nor do they even perform the basic function of ensuring the minimum requirements of the workers they employ. Like gang foremen, their job is to put their own men into these jobs, take away a part of the workers’ livelihood and pocket a substantial portion of the salaries and benefits paid by the government to those employees.
The agency pays outsourcing employees in the Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board Rs 13,500 a month. This is less than the minimum wage officially declared by the government. Even that amount has not been paid for three months.
Those working as meter readers in these jobs, unable to receive even this meagre salary, are being pushed towards starvation, suicides and deaths from heart attacks. Just the previous day, news that an outsourcing employee named Kiran had died of a heart attack in Fatehnagar Basti, following the death of a fellow worker named Srihari, had caused widespread shock.
Agitations began demanding that the problems of outsourcing employees finally be resolved, that the government take responsibility and that outsourcing agencies be regulated. Sympathy poured out for Kiran’s wife, left helpless with two little daughters. Agitations began demanding that the Water Board and the government take responsibility for compensation and for the family’s future security.
Social activist Prithviraj had demanded justice for the deceased man’s family. When he went to offer his condolences and was sitting beside the body, a large number of policemen entered the place around midnight. They created such a commotion that the freezer containing the body was pushed around, and they dragged Prithviraj away by force.
When the deceased man’s wife tried to prevent the police from attacking him, asking whether this was how the police treated someone who had come to offer condolences and demand justice, the police also brutally assaulted her. Her bangles broke in the scuffle, leaving her hands covered in blood.
Dragging people away from beside a dead body, and assaulting the wife while she was beside her husband’s body—such behaviour would not have happened even under the most brutal regimes.
The next day, the residents of the basti refused to conduct the funeral until they received an assurance of compensation and until the government announced what assistance it would provide. The police blockaded the basti, preventing people from entering or leaving. They also assaulted Toli Velugu journalist Raghu, who had gone there to cover the residents’ protest, arrested him and dragged him away.
As one resident of the basti told the Toli Velugu channel, the police “excelled in the job of attacking people and making arrests!”
Whether it is an opposition party staging a protest, a social activist agitating over a tragic death, or a journalist gathering news—whoever it may be, it is the police who do the talking, either with words or with their actions. There is no government, no government departments and no traditions of democratic discussion. None exist. This is what is called the restoration of democracy!
But this kind of police state is not confined to the Revanth Reddy government of 2026. Neither in undivided Andhra Pradesh nor in Telangana has any government ever acquired the habit of dealing democratically with the people. There has never been a habit of displaying a conciliatory approach different from a police state and brute force. This is the issue that needs to be thought about more deeply.
The police system that exists in India today was built by the colonial rulers. Since they were foreign rulers, in their eyes all Indians were enemies. Therefore, they trained their police employees with the attitude: “Whoever stands before you, consider them your enemy. Attack them, torture them, kill them; protecting us is your responsibility.”
That is why the police unleashed terrifying repression against every anti-colonial popular movement. Even the post-colonial Indian government did not change that police training one bit. Whatever the ideals of the Constitution and whatever guarantees existed for fundamental rights, the police continued to trample upon the law and the Constitution.
Just as in the old days, the police regarded the people—particularly those who questioned and protested—as enemies of their rulers and therefore as their own enemies, since they were employees of those rulers. They unleashed various forms of repression against the people.
In undivided Andhra Pradesh, particularly after the revolutionary movement began, the rulers gave the police enormous powers, virtually a licence to kill. People had no freedom of expression; there were restrictions on meetings. Society reached a point where people were afraid of the police. In police stations, there was no respect for human beings or citizens. Torture and encounter killings continued as a matter of routine.
Chandrababu Naidu, who began implementing World Bank-directed governance, introduced schemes offering accelerated promotions and cash rewards for killing people, reducing the police to the level of hired killers. Private armies were created to eliminate sympathisers of the revolutionary movement, and the police were made responsible for either remaining subordinate to or cooperating with those killer gangs.
That police state continued, and the Telangana movement for a separate state too had to endure various forms of violence and harassment.
In such circumstances, the state was divided, and a new state was created. An opportunity arose to bring the police under control, respect people’s rights and the Constitution, and begin new democratic traditions.
But the Telangana Rashtra Samithi government, as though it had read two pages more than the previous governments, strengthened the police state. There were no meetings. If you spoke, you were arrested. There were threats.
A man who invited a couple of friends to his home to remember his younger brother, who had been killed by the police in the name of an encounter twenty years earlier, was arrested. Even book-release meetings were disrupted. Protests demanding protection of education were attacked. Whenever the Chief Minister travelled to a town, members of all the people’s organisations in that town were arrested beforehand. The unemployed were consigned to detention camps.
People suffocating under the oppressive weight of that undemocratic police state heard the phrase “restoration of democracy” and hoped for change. Two-and-a-half years of Congress rule have been demonstrating every day that the police state has only expanded further.
Now it is the BRS that has the opportunity to say that it will restore democracy!
In undivided Andhra Pradesh, it was the Congress and the Telugu Desam; in the separate state, it has been the Telangana Rashtra Samithi and the Congress. Whoever sits on the throne, the people have no civil rights, while the police have the right to use force.
A police system sustained by the taxes paid by the people has been transformed into an army serving the rulers’ own interests!
Also Read:
Citizens aren’t slaves, police aren’t servants of CM or PM, reminds Bombay HC’s Justice Jamdar
Real issues aside, police raj is the answer in Telangana!
Revanth Reddy government: A hundred has become a thousand—adding a zero!
Telangana’s quiet double-engine sarkar — Part 1: The Congress-BJP policy convergence
(Edited by R Rajesh Kumar.)
