New Delhi: Remember the 1976 Manoj Kumar, Hema Malini and Prem Nath starrer Dus Numbri? Kumar played the role of Arjun, the son of a police officer, who went astray, took to crime, and is the ‘dus numbri’ referred to in the title. But do you know why cheats and habitual offenders are called ‘dus numbri’?
The answer is that of the 25 PPR (Punjab Police Rule) registers in police stations, register No. 10 is the one in which all the “bad characters” of an area are listed to be tracked.
A yet-to-be-released book titled Capital Cops, penned by just-retired IPS officer Suvashis Choudhary, answers this and many other questions you might have about the inner workings of the police; more specifically, the Delhi Police.
Choudhary, who superannuated as the Joint Commissioner (South Range) on 31 August this year after over three decades in the force, states in his Twitter bio that “I carry @DelhiPolice in my heart”. But he says he was bothered by the lack of books available anywhere on the Delhi Police, so he decided to write one himself. Capital Cops, he claims, is the first book of its kind.
“Delhi Police owes a primer to the citizens of Delhi. They draw their knowledge about their police either from the crime columns of newspapers or from social media chatter, interspersed with occasional press releases from the PR department. The reality of Delhi Police lies somewhere in between. This book is the first, albeit a partial attempt to fill the void,” Choudhary writes in the book, adding that it is an attempt to bridge the gap between public and the police force.
Over the course of 12 chapters, Choudhary provides insights on how deep-rooted and integrated the police system is, its lesser-known arms like the Special Branch, and the various Acts under which the police operate.
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From Khilji to the present day
Choudhary traces the lineage of the modern-day Delhi Police to the 13th and 14th centuries under Alauddin Khilji’s reign.
“From ‘Kotwal’ during the Delhi Sultanate to Police Commissioner in the present era, the Delhi Police has come a long way. The earliest recorded police officer called Kotwal was appointed during the reign of Alauddin Khilji (1296-1316),” Choudhary writes.
The author mentions the five first police stations in the national capital — Subzi Mandi, Nangloi, Mehrauli, Sadar Bazar and Kotwali — that came into being the same year that the “modern police force” was set up under the Police Act, 1861.
The first FIR, he writes, was lodged at PS Subzi Mandi on 18 October that year. This marks the beginning of the modern criminal justice system in Delhi. Since then, the capital’s police force witnessed the transfer of the imperial capital from Calcutta (as it then was) to Delhi, the freedom movement, Partition riots, Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, the Emergency, Indira Gandhi’s assassination, the anti-Sikh riots, and the capital’s grapples with terrorism.
“The identity of the contemporary Delhi Police is a product of this accumulated experience of the last century and a half. Initially created as a part of Punjab Police, it got its first Inspector General of Police, IGP, on 16 February 1948, now celebrated every year as its Raising Day,” the former IPS officer writes.
Currently, the force mans 163 police stations, with a total strength of 87,000 personnel.
Glimpse into inner workings
Alongside ‘dus numbri’, the former Joint CP explains a few police terms that haven’t entered the public’s lexicon, like ‘roznamcha’ and ‘malkhana’, and lists out the officers that one meets after entering a police station to register a complaint — a duty officer (DO), who records all the happenings, including the FIR, keeps the Station House Officer (SHO) informed, and also assigns the case to the emergency officer.
Complaints are entered in the ‘roznamcha’ or Station Dairy, which is another one of the 25 PPR registers.
A ‘malkhana’, meanwhile, is a storehouse of all case properties, whose custodian is called Malkhana Moharrir, Choudhary explains.
The former IPS officer also talks about ‘beat cops’, who can be found patrolling neighbourhoods, but have also played key roles in solving gruesome crimes like the high-profile ‘Tandoor murder case’ that shook the national capital on 2 July 1995. The case came to light after the accused, Youth Congress leader Sushil Sharma, was caught in action by constable Abdul Nazir Kunju, who saw “something big” burning in a restaurant during night patrolling.
“‘Something big’ was burning in a tandoor in the restaurant. That ‘something big’ turned out to be the body of Naina Sahni… The presence of mind shown by the beat policeman helped solve the infamous Tandoor murder case,” Choudhary writes.
Choudhary also details the specialised branches of the Delhi Police, such as the Crime Branch, Economic Offences Wing and CyPAD (Cyber Prevention Awareness Detection. These wings came into being after “the world of crime lost its innocence and simplicity”, he writes.
‘Children grow up horizontally’
Choudhary’s book also tries to shed light on the personal lives of police personnel, beyond their uniforms and badges. It talks about how their service in the force impacts their familial ties.
The book tries to bring the human side of the police to the fore, because the former joint CP believes it is often misunderstood by the public as there is little-to-no awareness of how the system works.
“On weekends and holidays, when most people either relax or have an outing… Policemen and policewomen are out with the same earnestness. ‘We see our children grow up horizontally’, they joke, implying that they find their children sleeping when they leave home in the early hours and again find them in bed, when they return late in the night,” Choudhary writes.
In the chapter ‘Flesh and blood — the men who matter’, the author talks about the hierarchy in the Delhi Police — gazetted officers, upper subordinates and lower subordinates, and how they all function together to keep the peace in the city.
(Edited by Shreyas Sharma)
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