Christmas Day 2009

This blog was almost dead for most of this year. We wanted to badly bring it back to life before the turn of the year, and it couldn't have been a better day than Christmas.

Back to coastal Karnataka

3rd March, I reached Mangalore at 10 am by flight from Hyderabad through Bangalore. Took charge of the District police by 12pm. I knew this place earlier as I had served as ASP Puttur subdivision which constitutes 3/4ths of the district. But believe me this one taluk of Mangalore that has got added to my previous tenure is a whole new ball game and I know that well. The day I landed here the elections to the parliament were announced. So it was to be all election work till the date of polling slated on the 30th of April. But little did I know that so much else was in store. On 15th of March was the Hindu Samajothsava. the main event which had a gathering of nearly a lakh went on peacefully but then, after the dispersal of the gathering small incidents of stone pelting did get reported in a couple of places and were handled locally by the police. They did turn out to be violent in the neighboring district of Udupi though.

Now that we thought the Samajyothsava was over, fresh trouble started in my old place Puttur. An incident of assault of one group of boys of a community on another group snowballed into such a mess that the next one week we were grounded to Puttur and surrounding places handling the situation.

On 20th just when things were settling down, Deepu came to Mangalore after her extended stay in Hyderabad. She had a look at her new house and though she was happy, she was bogged down with the effort of trying to rearrange the whole place.

On 9th of April an advocate was shot and murdered in the city. Allhell broke loose. I had to again leave Deepu at home run around handling the situation all night. To this day I have been splitting myself between Deepu and the Investigation of this sensational murder allegedly having been committed by an underworld don. Its a challenging case and my current days are being spent exclusively on the investigation of this case and off course election preparation.

The killing of the advocate had an interesting background. A week earlier to that we had nabbed a dreaded underworld associate of the infamous Chota Shakeel which is well known in the National media by now. Now this advocate took up the case of the nabbed person in court when the police wanted to take police-custody of the person. It is now alleged or rather claimed that he was killed by one of the opposite gangs in the underworld for having taken up his case. More interesting than all this is the way we actually nabbed the underworld associate which I may perhaps not be able to share here, but for once I felt thrilled about my job during that period.

Since the day we landed in Mangalore, we haven't been able to go to a beach, a movie or even a simple stroll into the city. The view of the sunset from the window has been our only glimpse at the sea. Don't know whats in store... hope the coming days will be fine for us.

last Phase in Bidar

Now that we are already out of Bidar and I am trying to sum up five months of events, i dont even recall many things to write here. Most important of all was that I finally took out a vacation and myself and Deepu went to the Andamans in mid November.

It was a great memorable trip but for the duration. We hardly spent about four days there and surely that place deserves atleast 10 days to get a feel of it. We also celebrated Deepu's Birthday there on the 17th with a nice private dinner at the lighthouse restaurant and with great seafood of the Andamans. The most memorable part of the trip offcourse was the snorkling experience among the corals.

We also made it to the Jarawa tribal reserve to see the jarawas. On the whole a good vacation.

December was mostly uneventful as much as I can recall now. January was to be the month of Bidar Utsav. A real big event for Bidar city. It was slated for 27, 28 and 29th of january and all preparations were made, guests called, a massive police deployment already put in place to manage the lakhs of crowds and finally when it came to the inauguration on the 27th, at 3.30 pm in the afternoon we got the sad news of the demise of our former President Shri Venkatraman. So much at stake ! The inauguration begun at 5 pm and just as the inauguration was over at 6.30 we received a message from the government that no functions will be held for the next one week. It was such a shock to not only the organisers but also the crowds that had gathered there. After a day the organisers recovered from the shock and again took a decision to have the Utsav on the 7th, 8th and 9th of Feb. It was held as planned again and the event went on well. Some memorable artists that we watched and met were, Sonu Nigam and Sunidhi chauhan. On the whole these events kept me busy with my job and also brought some appreciation from the general public for the way it was handled.

On 27 th of February I had to attend court at Arakkonam near Chennai, some left over work related to my previous CISF association. So myself and Deepu both decided to go to Chennai and spend some time together. So we left Bidar to Hyderabad on the morning of 26th and Deepu got to meet some of her Medical college classmates there that evening. Had a good dinner and took the next early-morning flight to Chennai. On reaching Chennai, I was told that the court was cancelled due to some advocates strike and we both decided to spend the rest of the day in chennai going around the city. We met some friends and went around the city. As we were doing this I got a call from my Bidar office that I had been transfered to Mangalore as SP Dakshina Kannada. I didnt know how to take it. In normal circumstances a posting to Mangalore is something an officer will die for. But here myself and Deepu were just about settling down in Bidar and had no problems with the place. We had settled down with a nice routine and had started to enjoy the place. Moreover Mangalore had developed into a notorious place with all the events like the Church attacks, Pub attacks and murders. I was sure in Mangalore I will have no time for Deepu. As we moved around the city of Chennai that evening, we were confused, but finally decided to take things as they come, go by the posting order and i'll take charge of Mangalore on the 3rd of March.

We returned back to Bidar the next day by the morning flight and got along with finishing the formalities of leaving Bidar. Most important of all was the packing of the whole house. It was a real tiresome job this time. We finally packed the house and Deepu & me left for hyderabad after handing over charge of Bidar on the morning of 2nd March. I left Deepu there and left for Mangalore on the morning of 3rd by flight.