Almost a year has passed when six persons were killed and more than 30 were injured in a blast at the Shingaar Cinema on October 14 last year. The Newsline team did a recce of Ludhiana to find out what ails the city police stations.

With a growing infrastructure and spiralling population, Ludhiana has grown by leaps and bounds in the last couple of years. But to guard the teeming millions, the state of city police stations is abysmal. The city, which witnessed a bomb blast in a cinema hall, is in no position to fight terror attacks.

Besides the dilapidated buildings, the Ludhiana police are combating with many other handicaps, including shortage of manpower and information technology.

A mere visit to any of the city police stations is enough to present the pathetic condition of the men in khaki. These antiquated and decrepit buildings are like Damocles' sword not only for the cops working there, but also for the people who visit these police stations. No wonder in July 2006, a man had died and eight others got injured when the outer wall of Division number 3 police station had collapsed.

However, later this police station was renovated.

The buildings of Division Number 1 (Kotwali) and Sadar Police stations had been constructed by the British and are over 100 years old.

There are 19 police stations in the Ludhiana police district. When asked about the facilities at these police stations, SP Headquarters Harish Kumar said, "What to talk about facilities, we don't have the basic infrastructure. Most of our police stations either operate from private buildings or some other department's buildings. From time to time, we have been taking up the matter to purchase these buildings but things have not moved an inch."

The Division number 1 (Kotwali) police station is in the most dilapidated state. The building is damp and stifling. Though recently, the state government had approved the plan to re-construct it, the construction will consume a lot of time. It's only the rooms of the station house officers (SHOs) in all the police stations that are comparatively better. Some even have air-conditioners.

As far as the quarters for the police personnel are concerned, none of the police stations have quarters for staffers. Some of the personnel have been allotted quarters in the Police Lines, but these are not sufficient even though the city police are facing staff crunch.

Besides the decaying buildings, the police are suffering from severe crunch of manpower. In 1992, the city had sanctioned a strength of 6,900 police personnel.

And today, when the population of the city has increased manifold, instead of increasing the manpower, it has been condensed it to about 4,000. Of these, many remain on other duties such as deputation or security of VIPs. It was two years ago, when the then Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) AS Rai had sent two proposals to the higher police authorities for increasing the manpower. "We have repeatedly sought increase in the manpower but our plea has fallen on deaf ears," says a senior police officer.

SSP RK Jaiswal admits, "Owing to infrastructure-related crunch, we have to face many difficulties. But we can't help it."

In this age of information technology, the Ludhiana police are still working with the outdated approach. All the work of registration of first information reports (FIRs) is done manually. This is besides the fact that 12 out of the total 19 police stations have been provided with one computer and seven police stations have been equipped with five computers each under the Common Intergrated Police Application (CIPA) programme, but a majority of the Ludhiana police are not computer literate.

As far as the working hours of the cops are concerned, they don't have fixed time. "We start our day at 8 and remain busy throughout the day either in routine chores or in the visits of the VIPs. We don't get time to take our meals at the fixed times and have to eat whatever we come across during our duty hours," rues an SHO requesting anonymity.

No wonder that a majority of policemen were found to be suffering from one ailment or the other during their annual medical examination in March this year. Over 1,700 police officers had failed the liver functioning test (LFT).

The city...

Considered to be the industrial and finance capital of Punjab, Ludhiana is the biggest city of the state. It is heavily populated with a sizeable number of migrants from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and other states. Not only the booming industry, the city will be having more than 20 mega malls and multiplexes in the coming months.

The manpower