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.