MADURAI: Was the Thirumangalam police station, the oldest in the five southern states, established to question and hold Veerapandiya Kattabomman?
The 18th-century Palayakarrar rebelled against the British by refusing to pay taxes. It is said that the Thirumangalam police station, in Madurai, was established, along with a court and a jail, in 1795-96 under the Madras Presidency so that the British could mount an inquiry against him, try and imprison him.
While all this is mentioned in a display board at the police station, the police department has precious little in the way of documents by which any of this could be verified. Superintendent of Police N Manivannan told his subordinates to go through all the records available to verify the information. However, he added that if the details were mentioned on the display board they must be true. The Thirumangalam police station now exists as the Thirumangalam Town, All Women Police Station and Thirumangalam Taluk police station.
Display board at Thirumangalam Town says in Tamil that “When the states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh were under the rule of the East India Company, the company created a taluk office, a police station, a court, a jail for Veerapandiya Kattabomman. However, later the station became inactive till it was established as a proper police station in 1860.”
“Thirumangalam police station was shifted from the original location to the place where the Taluk police station is being run. The old building is now locked,” said a police official.
Kattaboman was not the last high-profile figure the Thirumangalam police would deal with. In recent years, they had probed the 2011 pipe bomb assassination bid on BJP leader LK Advani.
The first case under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (since repealed) was registered in the police limits. The extremist Imam Ali escaped from custody in the station limits in 2002. He was later killed in an encounter in Bengaluru.