The Bombay City Police: A Historical Sketch, 1672-1916 — John Shaqi
The Bombay City Police: A Historical Sketch, 1672-1916Edwardes, S. M. (Stephen Meredyth)
History
The Bombay City Police: A Historical Sketch, 1672-1916
Edwardes, S. M. (Stephen Meredyth)
Crime -- India -- Mumbai; Police -- India -- Mumbai
The standing order to all persons to register their slaves was to be
renewed and enforced under a penalty. The Company agreed to pay the
Bhandari police Rs. 10 for every _coffree_ or runaway slave arrested
and placed on the works or on a cruiser; Re. 1 for every slave absent
from his work for three days; and Rs. 2 for every slave absent from duty
for one month; Re. 1 for every soldier or sailor absent from duty for
forty-eight hours, whom they might arrest; and 8 annas for every soldier
or sailor found drunk in the woods after 8 p.m. The money earned in the
latter cases was to be paid at once by the Marine Superintendent or the
Commanding Officer, as the case might be, and deducted from the pay of
the defaulter; and the total sum thus collected was to be divided once a
month or oftener among the Bhandaris on duty.
[Illustration: Armed Police Constable
Bombay City]
The officers in charge of the police posts and the Portuguese
_fazendars_, attached thereto, were to make a daily report of all that
had happened during the night and place all persons arrested by the
patrols before a magistrate for examination. The Bhandari patrols were
to assemble daily at 5 p.m. opposite to the Church Gate (of the Fort)
and, weather permitting, they were to be taught “firing motions and the
platoon exercise, and to fire balls at a mark, for which purpose some
good havaldars should attend to instruct them, and the adjutant of the
day or some other European officer should constantly attend.”
These Bhandari night-patrols, as organized by General Wedderburn, were
the germ from which sprang the later police administration of the
Island. We see the beginnings of police sections and divisions in the
three main night-posts with their complement of officers and men; the
forerunner of the modern divisional morning report in the daily report
of the patrol officer and the _fazendar_; and the establishment of an
armed branch in the fire-training given to the patrols in the evening.
The presence of the _fazendars_ was probably based on the occasional need
of an interpreter and of having some advisory check upon the exercise of
their powers by the patrols. In those early days the _fazendar_ may have
supplied the place of public opinion, which now plays no unimportant part
in the police administration of the modern city.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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