This is perhaps an appropriate place to describe the organization of the police in India. Prior to 1860 there was no uniform system of police. From the days of Warren Hastings various attempts to control crime, particularly dacoity i.e. robbery with violence by five or more persons, frequently by well organized gangs, had been made with varying degrees of success. Different Presidencies experimented with different systems. In 1860 a Commission19 was set up to examine all the systems of police in India and to make recommendations subject to certain guiding principles of which the more important were:

As a result of the Commission’s report the Police Act V of 1861 was passed, a brief and concise Act which continued to be the constitutional sanction for the Police throughout India. Naturally the system developed as conditions changed and modern police methods improved but always within the framework of the Act which was worded in such general terms as to permit of development.

The Commission recommended that a Civil Police Force should be formed in every Province of India and organized on an identical provincial basis. For every Province an Inspector General was to be appointed, responsible to the provincial government for the efficiency, control and well-being of the force, for the prevention and detection of crime and was empowered to make rules and regulations to that end. For many years the Inspector General of Police was a member of the Indian Civil Service, seconded for a period of about five years. The theory was that since all power executive and financial flowed from the Government which was composed of members of that service, a fellow member of that ‘heaven born’ service was more likely to obtain sanction and funds for police schemes than a professional police officer. It was not until about 1916 that police officers were considered fit to command their own force and presumably capable of justifying their proposals for innovation or expansion.

In the ensuing paragraphs on the organisation of the force and in the chart20 I have adopted the set-up as it was in Bengal since the province of Eastern Bengal and Assam lasted only for seven years, a subject which will be touched upon later in this book. First, it should be noted that, as in the Army, ranks were divided into ‘commissioned’ and ‘non-commissioned’ so in the Indian Police there were ‘gazetted’ and ‘non-gazetted’ ranks. The use of the word ‘gazetted’ indicated that appointments, promotions and postings of these ranks appeared in the official provincial Gazette similar to the ‘London Gazette’, while those relating to the non-gazetted ranks appeared in departmental orders.

The Ranks of Gazetted Officers in order of authority were Inspector-General, Deputy Inspector-General, Superintendent of Police, Assistant Superintendent of Police and Deputy Superintendent of Police. All these, except the Deputy Superintendent belonged to the Imperial Police or the “Indian Police Service” to give it its official title and in theory, were appointed for service anywhere in India and were appointed by the Secretary of State for India under a signed and attested ‘Agreement’. In actual fact these officers once appointed to a particular Province almost invariably remained in that Province throughout their service and received their promotion in the cadre of the Province. There were such marked differences of language, customs and conditions between Provinces that to move officers from one part of India to another would necessitate starting afresh in a new language and in new conditions. The whole Police Force is frequently and for convenience referred to as the Indian Police but strictly speaking the Deputy Superintendents and all ranks below belong to the various provincial police forces and, whereas officers of the Imperial service wore the shoulder letters I.P. whatever Province they might be serving in, the provincial officers and men wore the provincial shoulder letters, in the case of Bengal, B.P. and, whereas the uniform of the Provincial Officers and men varied from province to province, the uniform of the Indian Police Officers and their badges of rank were identical throughout India.

When I joined there were nine Provinces in India and each had its own police force under an Inspector-General responsible to the Provincial Government. The basic unit of administration was the District, the chief civil officer of which was the District Magistrate and Collector and the local head of the district police force was the Superintendent of Police. These two officials have been referred to as a duumvirate responsible for the peace and well-being of the whole District and its inhabitants.

Upwards Districts are grouped into Ranges (four to eight Districts to a Range, according to their size and importance) each Range under the control of a Deputy Inspector General who, as his title indicates, acts for and relieves the Inspector General of much that is routine and normal.

Downwards the District is divided into Sub-divisions and the Sub-divisions into Police Stations, or ‘thanas’. Each Police Station has a defined area of jurisdiction, a hundred square miles being a rough average. The Officer-in-charge of a Police Station is a Sub-inspector. A Sub-division might be co-terminous with a Police Circle, or divided into two Circles, with an Inspector of Police in charge. The Circle was a purely police area of administration, whereas the District and the Police Station had statutory connotation in the Criminal Procedure Code.

There were three principal grades of entry into the Police; Assistant Superintendents of Police recruited by the Secretary of State for India in England by competitive examination; Sub-inspectors of Police, recruited by their respective Province by a rigid process of selection; these were, educated young Indians who were required to be at least matriculates of one of the Indian Universities; from this grade were selected for promotion on seniority and merit the Inspectors. And lastly the constable who was required to have certain minimum physical standards, to be of good character and to be able to real and write in his own vernacular. These standards came into effect as a result of the Police Commission of 1902. At the time I joined, these standards had not been fully attained and many of the older Sub-Inspectors were literate only in their own language, yet none the less able for that, and many of the constables were illiterate.

Criminal offences against the Indian Penal Code were classified into cognizable and non-cognizable, much as in England where crimes are either felonies or misdemeanours. Cognizable meant cognizable by the Police and all such offences were required to be reported to and recorded at the nearest Police Station, and the Officer-in-charge was required to investigate or delegate the investigation to a subordinate Sub-inspector. Non-cognizable cases could be reported on personal complaint to a magistrate if the injured party so wished.

In a majority of Police Stations there was only one Sub-inspector and consequently he had to endeavour to investigate every reported offence himself; only in the larger and more populous areas would there be two or more Sub-inspectors. The minimum strength of a Police Station was one Sub-inspector, one Assistant Sub-inspector and six constables. The Assistant Sub-Inspector was equivalent to the Station Sergeant at a British Police Station, and attained this rank by selective promotion from the rank of constable.

Four to six Police Stations would comprise a Circle, one or at the most two circles would make up the Sub-division and a District might have anything from two to five Sub-divisions according to size and importance. The Sub-divisional Police Officer, the S.D.P.O., could be either an Assistant Superintendent (A.S.P) or a Deputy Superintendent (Dy. S.P). The latter grade was recruited by promotion from the rank of Inspector as well as by direct recruitment and a special course of training.

At the Headquarters of every District there was a force of Armed Police recruited and trained in close order infantry drill to serve as the Superintendent’s reserve in the case of emergency such as riots or other forms of civil disobedience, to furnish standing guards on the District and Sub-divisional Treasuries and to provide escorts for Treasure and for prisoners from one jail to another or from jail to court. Most of the personnel of this force were foreigners; the Bengali disliked the tighter form of barrack discipline which this entailed and found it most irksome. These foreigners were for the most part Eastern Rajputs from Bihar, but some Districts recruited Gurkhas or Garhwalis and a few had with their Rajputs an admixture of Sikhs and Punjabi Mussalmans. Many of these Armed Police Units had excellent pipe bands.

Every District had a small Intelligence Branch to deal with subversive activities by the extremists and terrorists, and the larger Districts had a small Detective Department to deal with highly organised or specialist crime. But in the ordinary day-to-day war against crime it was the Officer-in-Charge of the Police Station who was responsible for investigation, for maintaining the records of offences, convicted persons and suspects. It was estimated that on average a Sub-Inspector could investigate 120 cases a year though quite often he might have well over that number to deal with. He was however vested with power under the Criminal Procedure Code to refuse to investigate petty cases where the property was unidentifiable - such as food, grain or utensils, a common enough form of theft where the subsistence line even in good years was so low - provided the complainant did not press for action. Such cases had however to be entered in the record of reported cases. Under the same Code there was provision for action against persons who were known to be habitual criminals, but who were clever enough to escape substantive implication in any specific case. Proceedings could be taken before Magistrates specially empowered under the Code, to have such persons bound over in fairly heavy amounts of money on personal recognizances and with one or more sureties to be of good behaviour up to one year and as in most cases they were unable to find the money or any one to stand surety for them, they went to jail in default. Such cases involved a considerable volume of work for the Police Station staff but the temporary removal of the known bad character made this worthwhile. In addition the Officer-in-charge of a Police Station was the collecting and collating agency on behalf of the Government for a number of items of general importance, such as vital statistics, crop prospects, outbreaks of infectious disease in humans and cattle. It is clear then that the Sub-inspector held a most responsible post in the administrative machine.

The most important register at the Police Station was the ‘Village Crime Note Book’. This consisted of five volumes for each village, made up of eyeleted loose leaf sheets of stout good quality paper attached by cord through the eyelets to a stiff board cover.

Part I consisted of a history of the village and contained a record of the principal families in that village, of long-standing quarrels, important festivals, money lenders, hereditary gangs, if any, recurring land disputes (of ‘char’ land as mentioned in Chapter 1) and so forth.

Part II was a record of all cognizable cases occurring in the village with columned details as to section of the Penal Code, nature and value of property stolen if any, the result of investigation and the final result in court if the case eventually reached that stage.

Part III contained the names and full details of all residents of the village convicted of crime. (Part II and III entries were limited to cases of offences against property and cases which were likely to be recurrent).

Part IV contained the history sheets of all known criminals convicted or suspected of offences against property, including cheating, forgery and so on as well dacoity, robbery, burglary and theft. These histories also contained reference to associates, receivers and harbourers and were very ample, including full descriptions of the man and his ‘modus operandi’.

These bad characters were known as ‘dagis’ – a man with a black mark or ‘dag’ - and were grouped into three classes A, B and C. ‘A’ class dagis were those who had only one known offence or were not suspected of recidivism on account of reform in old age or infirmity and were not subjected to any form of surveillance except that if an officer visited his home village on other duty he would make discreet enquiries to ensure that he was not falling back. ‘B’ class dagis were the less important criminals and had to be visited once a quarter.

‘C’ class dagis were the active criminals and were kept under constant surveillance or as constant as the small strength at a Police Station could make it. For each ‘C’ class dagi a separate set of sheets - Part V and Va - was maintained. Part V contained a chronological record of all criminal activities, actual complicity in crime, suspicion of complicity, spending beyond his known income, etc. Part Va was a record of all domiciliary visits paid by the police to the dagi and any observation or deduction made from that visit. Part Va sheets were preserved for a year after the last entry at the end of which a summary of the observations made was carried to Part V, and the Va sheets could then be destroyed.

The main history sheets were never destroyed even in the case of A class dagis, except upon death and even then this was only carried out a year after death. In the event o£ a dagi permanently moving his residence, Parts IV and V were transferred to the Police Station of his new residence. In towns a similar Crime Note Book was maintained but by beats instead of villages.

The weight of the responsibility of the Officer-in-charge of a Police Station is accentuated by the fact that in all but a very few stations there was no telephonic communication and in quite a considerable number not even telegraphic. The result was that not only did the Officer-in-charge have to rely on his own judgment and initiative, but in dealing with riots or desperate and often armed gangs he knew that he could expect no help or reinforcement. There are innumerable instances of great gallantry and undoubtedly many more never reported, where a Sub-inspector with perhaps only three or four constables has interposed himself and his tiny force between warring parties of many hundreds and restored peace and prevented great bloodshed. We had every right to be proud of our Indian officers and men.

The Superintendent of Police was the chief police officer of the District. For the benefit of British readers he was in many respects analogous to the Chief Constable of a County, the principal difference being that he was responsible to no Local Authority, but through his Deputy Inspector General and Inspector General to Government in the Home Department. There were 26 Districts in Bengal together with three Railway Police Districts and the River Police. Districts varied in size from Howrah, almost wholly urban, with an area of only 522 square miles but with a population of over a million souls separated only by the River Hoogly from the City of Calcutta, and small, largely rural, Districts such as Bogra with 1600 square miles and about 1,160,000 inhabitants to Mymensingh with an area of 6,237 square miles and a population of over five million.

The S.P. was responsible for the prevention and detection of crime within his District, for the inspection of the Police Stations and other police officers, for the clothing equipment and discipline of his officers and men. At headquarters his office was divided into the English section which dealt with all correspondence with the Range and the Inspector General’s Offices, with other Districts and with other outside bodies and included an accounts branch to deal with all receipts and payments; the vernacular section which dealt with all papers relating to crime, and the Reserve Office, invariably situated in the ‘Lines’ where the barracks of the Armed Police Reserve, the clothing, arms and equipment stores were situated. The S.P. was required to inspect every Police Station and Court Police Office annually, to supervise and assist the Police Station staff in the investigation of all important crimes such as murder and dacoity and to maintain close liaison with his District Magistrate and all Sub-divisional Officers.

There remains for mention a very important indigenous body, the village police. Every village was required to maintain two or four watchmen known as village chaukidars, each small group of villages having a daffadar in general charge of the chaukidars in the group. These chaukidars were paid a small wage officially collected from the villagers by way of tax, for the performance of part-time police duties which included watching the movements of local bad characters, the arrival of strangers, reporting births and deaths within the village, and performing nightly rounds. They were not very reliable, they did a full day’s work in their own occupation - cultivating the fields or plying boats on the river or whatever it might be - and perhaps somewhat naturally were not over zealous about night rounds, they tended to belong to one of the party factions which existed in most villages, but despite all these short-comings the police could not have done without this local agency in view of the considerable areas which the Police Station covered with a very small permanent force.

At the headquarters of each District and Sub-division there was a court police office with an Inspector in charge and one or more Sub-inspectors who conducted the prosecution of all criminal cases in the lower courts before the magistrates. In the Sessions Courts before the Judges, prosecutions were in the hands of the Public Prosecutor a member of the local bar on a fixed scale of remuneration who was debarred from private practice. Indeed he was fully occupied and in the bigger charges had an Assistant Public Prosecutor to share the work. Similarly in the Civil Courts there was in each District a Government Pleader who appeared in all cases in which the Government was concerned, and who was the legal adviser to the District Officers on all law matters. In some way it was perhaps helpful to have a permanent panel of Crown lawyers but it had the disadvantage that with the exception of these officials the whole of the rest of the bar was inevitably engaged for the defence and tended to have an anti-police complex, and with the growth of national feeling this antipathy to the police who were the outward and visible sign of the Government went to some lengths and little co-operation in times of unrest could be expected from them. Yet so many of them were delightful people and among the higher educated group of the local community. I often thought that if instead of this system, briefs could have been parceled out among the more able members of the bar as a whole, relations might have been so much better.

The Headquarters of the Bengal Police was in Calcutta, the seat of Government of Bengal. Here the Inspector General had his office and here too was the Criminal Investigation Department with a staff of selected Inspectors and Sub-inspectors for important investigations which appeared to require the service of an expert or series of similar cases spreading over two or more Districts. Here too were the criminal records and the fingerprint section. The Bengal Police are justly proud of the fact that it was in Bengal that the method of classification of fingerprints was invented. It was long known that no two individuals had similar prints, the problem was to discover a method of classifying them for the purpose of record and comparison. India was a country where for years the thumb print had been used as a sign of receipt or attestation and in 1896 Mr. Edward Henry who was Inspector General of Police, Bengal, placed two Indian Inspectors, one a Hindu and the other a Muslim, on special duty for a period of a year to do nothing else but strive to work out a formula and a system of classification. This they eventually succeeded in doing and this method was approved by the Government of Bengal and put into practice. In 1901 Mr. Henry was appointed Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, London, and in due course the system which bears his name, was adopted in Great Britain and subsequently in most Police Forces in the World. Certain refinements have of course been added but basically the classification is that invented by these two Bengali Officers. Mr. Henry was, in 1903, appointed Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and was knighted.

The names of these two Bengali Officers were Azizul Haq and Hem Chandra Bose. Henry arranged for them to explain and demonstrate this system to a committee of experts in Calcutta in March 1897 and it was decided that this system had marked advantages over the then official anthropometric system and it was adopted officially that year in India. Both Officers received title of Khan Bahadur and Rai Bahadur respectively and an honorarium of Rupees 5,000/- each. Rai Bahadur, Hem Chandra Bose later introduced a method of classification of single digit impressions and a telegraphic code for communicating finger print classification. The work of these two officers has been one of the most signal contributions to the detection of crime and is most worthy of commemoration. 21

Bengal too was the first police force in India to have a school for training detectives. I had a considerable part in forming this school in 1924. At the Detective Training School, which was located in Howrah, selected young Sub-inspectors were taught how science could help us in the investigation of crime; the uses of ultra-violet and infra-red rays, the use of the comparison microscope, ballistics, the intensification of latent impressions - all these were taught practically. In addition while making no attempt to turn the students into scientists, they were shown by lectures and practical visits how the department of the Imperial Serologist, the Chemical Examiner, Bengal, the Mint officials and the Government Security Press could help in investigations as well as other experts in industrial processes. Unfortunately, during the serious period of financial stringency which Bengal passed through in 1930 this School had to be sacrificed to retrenchment and was not restarted until 1942.

There were three Railway Police Districts, one at Howrah which covered that part of the East India Railway and of the Bengal Nagpur Railway which lay within the boundaries of Bengal, one at Sealdah, Calcutta covering the broad gauge section of the Eastern Bengal Railway and the third at Saidpur in the District of Rangpur which was responsible for the metre gauge section of that railway. The River Police with Headquarters at Narainganj in Dacca was responsible for watch and ward on the network of rivers spreading south and east from the junction of the Brahmaputra and Ganges to the Delta. They were not required to investigate - this was done by the land police within whose jurisdiction the offence was committed - but had all the normal powers of arrest and search. The force was housed in floating Police Stations and had a number of very fast motor launches. Nightly, many a cargo boat would take advantage of these police stations to tie up in security during the hours of darkness.

19 Under the chairmanship of H M Court.

20 No chart has been found

21 See Sir Douglas’ Letter to The Times 15 July 1965. Percival pp. 334-336. Sodhi & Kaur 2005.