BENGALURU: In a move to boost the morale of lower rung staff, the city police top brass celebrated Deepavali with the families of policemen. City Police Commissioner Seemant Kumar Singh and his subordinates celebrated Deepavali with police families across 60 police residential quarters on Tuesday evening.
The Commissioner, Additional Commissioners and Joint Commissioners of Police, and jurisdictional Deputy Commissioners of Police (DCPs) visited police quarters and distributed sweet boxes and green crackers to all families. The officers interacted with children and promoted eco-friendly celebrations, and thanked the families for their support towards the police department.
Seemant Kumar Singh told the TNIE they thought of holding these celebrations as police personnel are always on duty, with no fixed hours, and don’t get time to celebrate with their children and families. “No one had done it before. I discussed it with my senior officers. We didn’t want to make it a formal function, but just visit as many places as possible.
We have 60 police quarters across the city. Some are big clusters, like 300 flats. We made teams and each officer with subordinates was assigned certain quarters to visit families with sweets and crackers.
The children never expected such celebrations, and were very happy. As per reports we got, the family members said they were not part of any such celebration. So we want this to be an annual feature. It was a morale booster for the police personnel. All police officers had gone in uniform so their duty was not affected,” Singh said.
DCP North Babasab Nemagoud said police staffers’ families enjoyed the experience and the response was excellent as senior police officers had celebrated the festival with them. “It was a first of its kind experience even for me to celebrate Deepavali with the police commissioner at the quarters in Nandini Layout. It was a surprise for the police families as everything happened at very short notice,” he said.
VK Vasudev, Madiwala sub-division Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP), said hostel students of Government Model Primary School inside CAR (South) premises were thrilled to celebrate Deepavali with police officers. Such festivals are rare for the students as some of them are orphans. The celebrations were led by DCP - South East Sarah Fathima. All the kids were given sweet boxes and green crackers, he said.
Rekha, a resident of Nandini Layout police quarters, said the police commissioner celebrating Deepavali with them had filled them with happiness and appreciation. “Such celebrations with the city’s top cop are very rare,” she added.
