No takers for two ‘haunted flats’ at quarters for high-ranking police officers

Police circles attribute the two‘unnatural’ deaths in the two flats as the reason for them remaining untouched all these years.

A senior IPS official in the rank of ADGP was officially the resident of one of the flats when he died of cancer, a couple of years ago. After his death, no one wanted to occupy the three-room apartment. In the second flat, a daughter of a senior police official committed suicide a few years ago. Since then nobody wanted to use that facility also.

However, officials pointed out that because there is no high demand and asofficers have more options, most of them prefer to take other apartments in the same complex.

“Even if the officers are ready to occupy the flats where the deaths happened, their families may hesitate to stay in those two houses. So, they avoid taking them,” sources said.

A senior official clarified that there was no waiting list for officers’ quarters and hence those two flats were remaining vacant for the past few years.

“As of June this year, there were 3 flats vacant in the official quarters of IGP/ADGP in Wallajah Road in Chepauk while five flats and another four flats were vacant in DIG quarters in Kilpauk and SP/ DC quarters at Kilpauk respectively,” said Seema Agrawal, additional director general of police, headquarters.

As a policy, if the officer owns a house in Chennai, they would not be eligible for official quarters.

Implementation of this policy in letter and spirit had also reduced the demand for official quarters among IPS officers as a good number of them now own houses in Tamil Nadu All India Service Officers Housing Association.