‘Operation Chabutra’ transforming young lives in Hyderabad

"Op Chabutra aims at counseling youngsters; motivating them to engage in constructive things," say police

Hyderabad: A group of noisy youngsters are sitting in a street corner in Kalapather in the old city in the late night hours. Laughing and shouting, they have been disturbing the colony residents for long. Suddenly, a police van suddenly pulls up, and policemen in civil uniform haul the youngsters into the van before driving off.

Interestingly, it is not to a police station that they are taken. Instead, they are taken to a function hall nearby, where the police offer a chair, followed by a bottle of water. Soon the youth realise they were picked up as part of ‘Operation Chabutra’, an initiative started a few years ago to counsel youngsters.

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Operation Chabutra, known in local parlance as ‘Chabutra Mission’, is an exercise to round off those loitering on the streets late in the night, or sitting idle in street corners, often creating nuisance for local residents.

“Actually, the word Chabutra in Urdu roughly means a cement platform constructed alongside the wall of a house to give additional support to the wall and to protect it from damage caused by rodents. These became seats for youngsters to sit and chitchat for hours,” said Ramagundam Police Commissioner V Satyanarayana, who was earlier DCP (South) in Hyderabad, and during whose tenure that Operation Chabutra was introduced.

“Initially there was reluctance from local leaders and parents. Gradually people realised the youngsters were not harmed but counselled on utilizing their time fruitfully and not causing inconvenience to neighbours late in the night,” Satyanarayana told Telangana Today.

Whenever there is a rise in complaints about late night nuisance from any particular area, the police teams conduct an Operation Chabutra. “Parents of the youngsters are also counseled and asked to keep an eye on the activities of their children. In several cases, we found youngsters were getting involved in street fighting or group clashes over issues that developed from the ‘chabutra seats’,” said MA Majeed, ACP (Falaknuma).

Gummi Chakravarthy, DCP (Task Force), Hyderabad who supervised one such operation at Kalapather on Wednesday night, said the main focus was to counsel the youngsters and motivate them to engage in constructive things.

“We explain to them on focusing on their careers and properly utilise their time. We also tell them about the problems they could face if any criminal cases are booked,” he said.

 

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