The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : 150 years of City Police

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 26, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

150 years of City Police

Sandhya Soman

Police Commissioner's Office in Chennai.

CHENNAI: It is 150 years since the city police stopped monitoring the supply of fish and sale of vegetables in British Madras. In fact, it was on April 25, 1856 that Lt. Colonel J.C. Boulderson took charge as the Commissioner of Police, according to the city police website and archival records. When Col Boulderson took charge on April 25 from E.F. Elliot, who was chief magistrate and superintendent of police for nearly two decades, it was also the end of an era of protecting the interests of the East India Company.

"The new force confined itself to duties which were purely police: preservation of peace, protection of lives and property and prevention of crime."

The year 1856 brought in the City Police Act XIII to regulate the "Police of the Towns of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay... " By this Act, head of the Town Police was designated as the Commissioner of Police. All very much modelled after the Metropolitan Police of London.

`The History of the Madras Police,' brought out in its centenary year, says rather tellingly that the Madras City Police was born to "meet the growing demands of the Government and constant needs of the citizens," after the earlier system had outlived its role to protect the interests of East India Company. According to a senior official, the office and the reorganisation of the force paved the way for the setting up of state police officially in 1859.

"There was a fullfledged intelligence wing under the Commissioner even before the CID was established in 1906," says the official.

The current Commissionerate is still housed in the bungalow on Pantheon Road built in 1842 by C. Arunagiri Mudaliar on a paddy field.

Other than the white columns, the wide porch and the inevitable maintenance work every year, there is also a plaque just outside the commissioner's office to remind Mr. Boulderson's "taking charge" and with it, ringing in a revitalised police force.

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