Bangalore University’s Jnana Bharathi to get a police station to curb rising crime

A police station is likely to come up in Bangalore University’s Jnana Bharathi campus soon in backdrop of rise in the area’s crime rate.

College authorities told DNA that police commissioner Jyothi Prakash Mirji has agreed, in principle, to sanction a police station. The university will provide the land to construct the station.

BU vice-chancellor N Prabhu Dev told DNA that about a month ago, the varsity had requested the police commissioner to build a police station inside the campus.

College officials said that the crime rate in the campus premises had been increasing.

They pointed out that 25 sandalwood trees were stolen on Friday. A BU staffer, who stays in university quarters, noted that this was the third time in a year that sandalwood trees were stolen from the campus.

Dev said although there was an outpost at the campus entrance at Mysore Road, the security staff there had old weapons. He added that these days, even burglars carry modern weapons and could easily overpower the ill-equipped homeguards.

He said this is why BU had requested the police commissioner to build a station in the campus.

Simple solution ignored?
Some BU officials told DNA that the main reason behind rise in crime rate was leaving campus gates open at night. However, Dev said the BBMP would not allow closing the gates as they were on a public road. He said the gates could not be closed until an alternative road is built.

A few years ago, the university had decided to close two gates — one at the NAAC entrance and the other at Mysore Road — from 6am to 6pm. However, they had to withdraw the decision because of protests from public.