For the past one month or so, several police officers and politicians in both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are a worried lot. Hidden from the public eye, they are busy working their way through the corridors of power in the Telangana political establishment to ensure that they do not land in the dock in the Nayeem case.

Police officers who retired from senior positions in the two decades have sought help from political parties to present their case to chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao to ensure they are not embarrassed in their twilight years. Those negotiating on their behalf argue that it would be wrong to assume that every cop who maintained contact with the gangster is corrupt and should be implicated in the case.

“Nayeem was an enigmatic character. Several state governments – Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and even IB used him. Because of his information, they secured many breakthroughs,” said one leader, presenting a senior officer’s case.

The officers are upset because KCR has reportedly instructed the Special Investigation Team to go after every person against who proof exists of wrongdoing. KCR sees in this his hawala diary kind of moment with several names mentioned in Nayeem’s diary. The CM realises that most of those in the dock will belong to the earlier TDP and Congress regimes, under whose watch Nayeem is believed to have flourished and this would work to the TRS advantage, politically. Of course, there are some black sheep in his party too who are likely to come under the radar but KCR seems to have decided that purging TRS of such elements would do his image a great deal of good.

But the police force points to the morale getting affected if retired cops are targeted. Any officer would think twice before cultivating any shady contact in future, for fear of his name cropping up as a contact, say cops.

Then there is also the angle of Nayeem having been the elusive Kaleemuddin who is believed to have invited Sohrabuddin and Kauser Bi to Hyderabad. The duo was subsequently bumped off in an encounter by Gujarat police. The case also revolved around the alleged involvement of Amit Shah, then Gujarat’s minister of state for Home and sources say if too much is dug into the alleged involvement of then Andhra officers, it will open up a can of worms, that will leave a lot many powerful people embarrassed. The BJP national president has however been acquitted in the case because no evidence was found against him.

The Telangana police pretty early on in the in the investigation released a list of Nalgonda journalists who had received cash (Rs 1000) and some alarm clocks as gifts, suggesting that they were compromised. It was seen as an attempt to subtly threaten the media to keep the heat off the Nayeem case.