A police chowky to guard a Mukesh Ambani's palace

Mr Mukesh Ambani’s men have asked the BMC for a police chowky for his landmark residence Antilia. The need for special protection has arisen, thanks to a handwritten letter received by Reliance Industries, threatening Mr Ambani and his residence (an entity by itself, it would seem).

The letter, received in February, was supposedly from the Indian Mujahideen, but carried neither the trademark IM signature nor logo. So anyone could have written it.

But who can refuse the country’s richest man anything? Going by newspaper reports, police commissioner Satyapal Singh has already agreed to a temporary chowky for Antilia.  

Police chowkies are part of community policing, aimed at giving localities the feeling that the police aren’t far away. Each chowky is supposed to be headed by a sub inspector and 15 constables. The Antilia chowky will obviously cater to the family who owns the structure. But the salaries of the policemen guarding this single private structure and the individuals who use it, will be paid by us, you and I.

Smaller fry than Mr Ambani have tried to get chowkies for themselves, though no one seems to have yet done so for their own residence. A case concerning privately sponsored chowkies has been going on in the Bombay high court for the last six years. In 2008, when the hearings began, the police admitted that of the 388 chowkies in the city, as many as 269, that is 70%, didn’t have the BMC’s permission. Today, these figures have changed marginally.

In the intervening six years, the police have demolished 61 illegal chowkies, that is, ten every year. For the remaining, they have applied to the BMC for regularisation, the commonest solution in Maharashtra for every unauthorised construction, except those put up by poor migrants. For the shanties put up by the latter, the state has only one solution: demolition. This may happen despite court orders or express instructions from Union Ministers against such demolition.

 The high court’s remarks while hearing the illegal police chowkies PIL (filed by a private citizen, IK Chhugani) are interesting. Expressing displeasure at the private sponsorship of chowkies, the court had said, “If you have accepted private investment for infrastructure, it is misconduct.’’ Such funding could affect the people’s faith in the police, said the judges. “When you have advertisements on booths, the common man can think that (the) police are at the beck and call of somebody.”

Well now, the Antilia chowky won’t need advertisements to tell the world that its personnel are at the beck and call of somebody. However, will this chowky fulfil the solemn assurance given by the police to the high court during the hearing of the PIL? “The construction of chowkies,’’ the police had said in its affidavit in 2008, “would be centralised and sanctioned from headquarters…only after obtaining necessary permission from the BMC.’’ No sponsorship or private donations would be accepted, the affidavit had promised. What about space? The Commissioner himself has been quoted as saying that if the Ambanis give the space, the Antilia chowky would be built.

A chronically short-staffed police force ‘protecting’ VIPs from the public is bad enough. But a chowky for Antilia raises a different, more serious question — about the private use of public servants. What do Mumbai’s residents feel about the police, whose salaries are paid by them, being used to guard a private individual, one whose net worth was reported last month as $21.5 billion?

The writer is a Mumbai-based freelance journalist.

Views expressed are personal.