Oldest police station suffers space crunch

Chennai: Royapettah police station on Gowdiya Mutt Road, a few metres from the Exp­ress Avenue Mall and the Government Royape­ttah Hospital, is one of the oldest buildings in the city.

The colonial building, sa­ns a compound wall and a mediocre infrastructure, has history to it, it being one of the oldest police stations in Chennai.

Those who work at the station say that the building became operational in 1901, along with other old police stations, such as Triplicane, Royapuram and Washermanpet stations.

The station, which has 46 personnel in the Law & Order division and 15 in its Crime Division, functions out of a cramped space.

“Maintenance of old records of cases is a problem as the storage room has very little space, leading to either records going missing or getting damaged,” staff said.

Since the building lacks a compound wall, police vehicles can be parked only along the road. Also, citizens park their motorbikes in front of the station, said staff members.

Staff also claimed that while there were adequate lavatory and other infrastructural facilities matching those of their counterparts in the city, there was a lack of waiting rooms and rest rooms for the police.

Behind the Law & Order station is the Traffic Regulation Office, which resembles a dungeon.

A few metres away and in a lane opposite the Pilot theatre, the assistant commissioner’s office and all women’s police station are located.

The all women’s station, with 15 women police, portrays a sorry façade, with aluminium metal sheets ‘decorating’ the semi-constructed wall and roof.

Not all old buildings are in shambles. For instance, the Triplicane police station, inaugurated in 1890, believed to be the oldest police station in the city, has ample space and more than 100 personnel from different wings working out of the station.

North Beach, another station working out of a colonial building, is well maintained, observed a senior official.

Staff shortage in Nungambakkam

Chennai: A swanky building wi­th ample parking spa­ce in the front and state-of-the-art facili­ti­es within, the Nun­g­a­mbakkam police station, inaugurated in 2006, is one of the new buildings built for th­is purpose in the city.

It started out as a police outpost in 1902 and was made into a station in 1967 with a sub-inspector, a head constable and 38 poli­ce constables, says Ga­n­e­sh, a retired writer who served at the station. The new building was one among the few stations that benefited from the Mo­­dernization of Pol­i­­ce Forces (MPF) sc­h­e­me.

The station boasts of the necessary in­f­r­a­structure required of a modern police stati­on, with lock ups, a pr­oper storage room to maintain records and rest rooms for office­rs.

In fact, the inspection and observation records of the old bu­i­l­d­ing are still intact. 

As one staff member observed, usually the government buildings have proper infr­a­structure, while tho­se stations functioni­ng out of rented ac­c­ommodation lack adequate maintenance, li­ke the ones at K.K. Nagar and Kumaran Nagar, to name a few.

Nungambakkam station also houses the assistant commissio­n­er’s office on the fi­rst floor and the tr­a­ffic regulation wing too functions out of the same office.

As a senior official put it, the new buildings ha­ve similar designs and are usually well eq­u­i­p­ped and have all the wings in a single bu­i­l­d­ing.

However, the Nun­ga­mbakkam police station, with an actual st­r­ength of 37 personnel, suffers from sh­o­r­ta­ge of staff, officials said. Nungambakkam was now a prime area in the city, said an official.

There were now various government buildings in the area, like Shastri Bhavan, the Regional Meteo­ro­lo­gical Centre’s office, DPI, Loyola College, the Sri Lankan Air­li­nes office and the Sri Lankan Deputy High Commission office on Sterling Road. Providing security and policing had become strenuous, he added.