Special police stations for SCs, STs in Andhra

The Andhra Pradesh government has decided to set up six police stations exclusively to deal with cases involving atrocities on scheduled castes and scheduled tribes in six sensitive districts of the state. The move is the first-of-its-kind in the state.

The state-level vigilance and monitoring committee headed by chief minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy at its meeting on Saturday also decided to create six more special courts for handling such cases in districts that do not have them.

According to the chief minister's office, about 1,739 cases under the SC, ST Atrocities Act have been filed under various police stations in the state as on June 2007. A total of 12,386 cases were booked between the year 2003 and 2007, of which 2,474 are pending for trial, according to officials.