Policing | Greyhounds at a crossroads
As the Maoist insurgency wanes, Telangana is shifting part of its elite Greyhounds force to new policing roles, including traffic management and cybercrime, even as Andhra Pradesh opts for caution
SPEED, SURPRISE, SKILL: The Greyhounds have become a benchmark in counter-insurgency policing in India
ISSUE DATE: Sep 21, 2026 | UPDATED: Sep 12, 2026 15:10 IST
The Greyhounds were trained for a war that no longer looks the same. For more than three decades, the elite police force of undivided Andhra Pradesh and, later, Telangana as well, hunted Maoist guerrillas through some of central India’s most difficult terrain. Created in the late 1980s as Left-wing extremism (LWE) intensified, the Greyhounds became one of the country’s most closely watched counter-insurgency units, earning a reputation for jungle warfare, intelligence-led operations and tactical precision.