Hyderabad, October 13: Now, a posh police station which actually fits the bill of a posh locality. The newly constructed Jubilee Hills police station was inaugurated on Tuesday. Inaugurating the new police station, home minister P Sabitha Indra Reddy promised all support to the department for functioning effectively.
A look at the previous police station which functioned for the past 25 years and the new one shows how things have changed for the better.
From a cramped and congested premises, the new police station sports a corporate office look. Access to the new police station will become easy for complainants with its positioning on the Jubilee Hills road no 36. Earlier, the police station used to function from a premises in a by-lane of road no 18 and was difficult to locate for people.
“One can’t compare between the old and the new one,’’ said Jubilee Hills police inspector K Narsing Rao. The previous premises, which were a rented one used to be very congested with just a main hall and two rooms. “The entrance used to be so cramped that a person or a complainant sitting in the hall had to make way for anyone who wanted to enter inside,’’ the officer said. This invariably left no room for privacy to a complainant or a petitioner. “People come with various kind of complaints and sometimes they need privacy.
In such a cramped space, there was no scope for a person to speak freely,” another police officer said. For the policemen, the old premises was nothing more than a ‘lock-up’. Only the station house officer used to have a separate room, while sub-inspectors had to work from a single room in which the writer and others function.
The police station has a strength of 120 officers, including the SHO, three SI’s, two assistant SI’s, five head constables, 60 constables and 55 Home Guards. Half of the staff would be present at any given point of time.
“A few years back, we constructed a room for the constables as it became too congested,’’ Narsing Rao said. The situation was so pathetic that if a senior officer ever visited the police station, he preferred to sit in the open rather than inside, as there was no proper ventilation.
City police commissioner AK Khan said new buildings were being constructed for Nallakunta, Kacheguda and Madannapet police stations apart from buildings to accommodate policemen from the districts and Andhra Pradesh Special Police who come to the city for bandobust duty. Film actor Sri Hari, who is popular for his police officer roles, donated Rs 50,000 for the new building.
–Agencies