Hyderabad: Over 17,000 personnel from the Hyderabad police were deployed to oversee the immersion procession and move things along, together with NCC cadets and NSS volunteers on the Hussainsagar stretch on Sunday.
Also, on the ground were 13 units of the anti-Maoist Greyhounds, two units of the terror-buster Octopus on the immersion routes.
Apart from this, emergency teams like Vajra vehicles, gas squad and quick response teams were also stationed at the immersion centres. Bomb disposal squads, sniffer dogs were deployed at some of the more famous Ganesh pandals.
Director General of Police M. Mahendar Reddy and other top officials including Mr Avinash Mohanty and Ms Shikha Goel monitored the procession at the control centre that was receiving feed from CCTV cameras along the entire length of the immersion.
“Emergency response teams were stationed at strategic locations. They were deployed based on previous experience of Ganesh bandobast and knowledge of sensitive and hypersensitive areas,” an official said. Government, police and civic body officials had held meetings with the Ganesh Utsav Samiti to ensure that the procession moved along swiftly.
The command control at the state police headquarters received CCTV feed from major towns to enable monitoring on a real-time basis. Besides this, the idols were geotagged, said Hyderabad police commissioner Anjani Kumar.
The DGP asked people not to believe in social media rumours.
