Did Mysuru cops forget policing?

Mysuru: The violence in Mysuru, which lasted for over eight hours on Monday,  seemed to have caught the cops napping. While vehicles were burnt and shops ransacked, the  policemen deputed to protect the city,  merely hit their lathis on the ground to disburse the mob.

As the BJP called for the  bandh on Sunday night, the police had ample time to work out a strategy to deal with the tension , but it merely promulgated prohibitory orders and failed to deploy additional forces in sensitive parts of the city, say observers.

Also,while the senior police officers  were focusing on  the Mysore Medical College where the dead body of the murdered BJP worker was kept, miscreants had a field day pelting stones on government and private buses in other parts of the city. They also staged a dharna and prevented the operation of buses from the main bus stop,  even terrorizing people with lathis.

Thousands of people on the KR Hospital road raised anti- government slogans, while BJP leaders accompanied by  party spokesperson, CT Ravi staged a dharna nearby,  making a mockery of the prohibitory orders.

A two- wheeler and an autorickshaw parked inside the hospital were torched and  the window panes of a car belonging to the hospital medical superintendent were smashed.

And even as another group entered the Devaraja market and ransacked the shops of a particular community, there was no sign of the police, say others. A boy hit a  shopkeeper with a stick injuring him on the head and another was hit on the head by a stone with no police around to stop the violence.

“The police failed to gauge the situation. They should have deployed additional reserve police in the communally sensitive areas and not  allowed the people to gather in front of the hospital. Underestimating the BJP resulted in these  incidents. The top brass has to be present on the ground to deal with the situation and not  leave everything to their deputies,” said a former police commissioner, now retired.