Conserving heritage buildings: Police museum proposed in Bidar

The multi-point museum will function from two or three places acrossthe city

October 27, 2016 12:00 am | Updated December 02, 2016 11:56 am IST - Bidar:

Heritage structures:The gun magazine store house in the district police office and the 111-year-old heritage building that housed the Superintendent of Police office in Bidar earlier.— Photos: Gopichand T.

Heritage structures:The gun magazine store house in the district police office and the 111-year-old heritage building that housed the Superintendent of Police office in Bidar earlier.— Photos: Gopichand T.

The district police are planning to set up a police museum in Bidar.

The plan involves conservation of heritage buildings that will house antique implements, documents, uniforms and arms. The proposed multi-point museum will function from two or three places across the city. Apart from a few rooms hosting curated materials, the museum will also have a model police station that will help schoolchildren understand how policing works.

Among the buildings likely to be included in the project is the imposing, 111-year-old office of the Superintendent of Police on the district police office premises.

The gun magazine store house behind the police grounds and the barracks built by the Nizam of Hyderabad will be included in the circuit. The heritage police building that is over 100 years old near the Choubarah in the old city and the barracks behind it will be a major part of the circuit. The dog shelter will also be decked up to show case canine talent to schoolchildren.

It all began with the visit of a team of research scholars from the Bengaluru-based Srishti School of design. The team met Superintendent of Police Prakash Nikam seeking to borrow drones from the Police Department to survey the outer fort wall and the moat surrounding the city. After the initial aerial survey was conducted, the official asked them to look at the structural stability of some heritage police buildings. The students noticed that most of them had fallen into disuse. They came up with the idea of adaptive reuse of these buildings after restoration.

“Preservation of historic buildings is a one-time job. But the selection of materials, preservation, maintenance, collection and and archiving of equipment can go on in phases,” says Shreyas Srivatsa, senior faculty at the school.

“I discussed the idea with my colleagues. They have decided to draw up a large project that will be divided into several small ones, to be taken up by junior and senior students. We will submit the ideas and the Police Department will implement those that they think fit,” Mr. Srivatsa said. A separate section of the design school that specialises in such projects will land in Bidar by the end of the year. The students would earn credits for such work, he added.

Hari Babu, Additional Superintendent of Police, who was involved in creating the police museum in the police academy in Mysuru, will be part of the team.

“Police stations in Hyderabad Karnataka have historical documents, equipments and pictures as they have been ruled by the Nizam, the Hyderabad and Mysore states and the modern Karnataka. We will try to procure such invaluable items from the stations,” Mr. Babu said.

“Such a museum will be of great educational value. More over letting heritage buildings wither away would be such a loss,’’ says Mr. Nikam.

“We will seek the help of the district administration, non-governmental organisations and philanthropists in completing the project. But we are keen that the interventions are frugal and simple. Our efforts will minimal, but the results will be long lasting,” he added.

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