Cops take social media route to share their woes with judge

A day after the state government informed the Madras High Court that the strength of policemen deployed at Poes Garden has been reduced from 50 to 15 after being pulled up by Justice N Kirubakaran, who observed that the policemen are burdened with bundobust duties and deprived of spending time with their families, members of TN constabulary association on Tuesday wrote an open letter on social media highlighting their grievances to the judge. 

“Last week the judge had questioned about the police personnel being burdened with unnecessary bundobust duties and noted that such duties deprived police of time with their families. So, we believe that the judge is seriously concerned about the welfare of the police personnel. Hence, we decided to write an open letter to him, as the government and senior police officials were not taking any steps to our handful of demands,” a member of the constabulary association noted. 

The Facebook page ‘Justice N Kirubakarans’ followers’ has been getting scores of comments, a majority of them requesting the High Court judge to do enough for the welfare of the police personnel. 

The requests mainly centred around the demands the members of the constabulary association had made, during the hunger strike call a week ago. The police personnel stressed on weekly off, stipulated working hours, salary at par with other government department staff, etc. Other demands from the police include over-time pay for working on holidays, food allowance to all district cops equal to that of Chennai police personnel, medical insurance for parents, compensation of Rs 25 lakh to the family of police personnel died on duty and promotion at par with the other government departments.

Initially, the issue of deployment of police personnel came up during the hearing of a petition regarding the steps taken by the state to curb sale of tobacco products near schools. The government had then claimed that there were not enough police personnel to check the menace.