After kidnap incident, DGP says all is well on law and order front in AP

VIJAYAWADA: The state police department, at the receiving end after a sensational kidnap incident in Visakhapatnam, has claimed that the law and order situation has improved in Andhra Pradesh.

DGP Rajendranath Reddy refuted allegations by the opposition that Visakhapatnam was having poor law and order situation as was evident from a heist at the home of an MP this week. “The law and order in the state including Vizag remains strong. Hence the police immediately caught the culprits in the kidnap incident involving the MP’s wife and son,” he has asserted.

Addressing the media here, the DGP said the AP police reacted immediately in every case as was also seen in the Visakhapatnam kidnap incident. “The police took the accused into custody within no time. We arrested three accused in a few hours’ time in the incident of an acid attack on a private hospital receptionist in Eluru.”

He said, “The police recovered Rs 86.50 lakh from the accused in Vizag ‘MP family kidnap case’ – of which, Rs 21.50 lakh was recovered from a lawyer and Rs 25 lakh from the mother of another accused, Rajesh, and Rs 40 lakh from a female friend of the main accused, gangster Hemanth.” Over a crore had been taken away from the family during the heist.

The DGP recalled that the GIS and G-20 conclaves held in Vizag were without any problems due to alert from the police department. “There is no land grabbing case/issue in Visakhapatnam and crime rate has not increased in the state.”

The gangs such as Hyper Boys, Dandupalyam, Chittimama, Khasim and 3-Star lost their moorings in Visakhapatnam before 2015. Some 178 kidnap cases were registered in Visakhapatnam in 2019, which decreased to 76 in 2020, 39 in 2021, 43 in 2022 and 8 till May this year. But,  214 kidnap incidents had been reported in Vizag in 2018, he said.

The DGP said the AP police had identified 122 serious offences across the state and SP-level officers conducted the investigations. Out of them, 90 cases were sorted out and convictions came in less than a year.

As for the acid attack on a woman in Eluru, Rajendranath said the compensation of Rs 25 lakh was handed over to the victim girl at the initiative of the police and one eye of the victim was also saved from damage with the urgent steps taken by the police.