The Dharwar craton, Cuddapah basin and the Godavari graben characterise three diverse geological and tectonic settings in the peninsular shield of India. Owing to their contiguous proximity, they offer a unique opportunity to document differences, if any, in their seismic wave attenuation characteristics that might have a bearing on the seismogenic nature of the crust in a craton, basin and a rift-like graben structure. An attempt is made here to bring out these differences using constraints from coda-Q. We considered local earthquakes with epicentral distances ranging from␣14 to 150 km recorded at the digital broadband stations at Dharwar (DHD), Cuddapah (CUD) and Kothagudem (KGD) regions to derive the frequency-dependent coda-Q relations. Using the single scattering method, we obtained the frequency-dependent Q _C relationship (Q _C = Q ₀ f ⁿ )for each of the three geological units separately: DHD: Q _C = (730.62 ± 0.09)f ^{(0.54 ± 0.01)}; CUD: Q _C = (535.06 ± 0.13)f ^{(0.59 ± 0.01)} and KGD: Q _C = (150.56 ± 0.08)f  ^{(0.91 ± 0.01)}. The Q _C values obtained for all the three sub-regions show moderate to strong frequency dependence and essentially reflect the level of crustal heterogeneities to varying degrees.