Anyone with some amount of power can play the moral police these days. Just as the personnel of a private security agency have been doing at the Kasu Brahmananda Reddy National Park in Hyderabad, says a report in the Hindu.
Details: [Link]
David Shulman, renowned professor from Hebrew University and Suchitra Seth, an academician from Ahmedabad, were meeting after a long time and wished to take a post-breakfast stroll inside the park. However, security guards at the gate did not take kindly to their intention and sought to know if they were “a couple”!
“When they said they were not, the guards refused to allow them inside. Even after being informed about their not-so-juvenile age and status of being grandparents, the guards did not yield. All entreaties and protests fell on deaf ears,” said Prof. Jyotirmaya Sharma of University of Hyderabad (UoH). He pointed out that both knew Telugu perfectly and left no scope for linguistic confusion.
The academicians were in the city for different purposes -- Prof. Shulman to attend an international conference in UoH and Ms. Seth to visit her parents.
When contacted, officer-in-charge of the park, Raja Ramana Reddy, denied that there were any such instructions from the Forest Department. However, the private security agency manning the gates had evolved its own regulations in order to curb entry to “anti-social” elements. “There have been instances of chain snatching inside the park. The 142-acre park is dense and it will be difficult to locate anybody once he or she gets in. This must be the reason for the strange behaviour of the guards,” he explained.
