For the old students of Police Training School at Vellore Fort, Monday was a memorable day.
Around 25 alumni of the 1987 batch of trainee Sub-Inspectors for Law and Order wing of the Tamil Nadu Police Department gathered at the corridor in the central pillar hall to reminisce their days at the training centre. After a gap of three decades, most of them have retired from service as Superintendents of Police and Assistant SPs.
“Due to our work, we were able to talk to each other only over the phone. When the idea to have a reunion came up, I decided not to miss it," says 60-year-old R. Veera Raghavan, who was Superintendent of Police (Cyber Crime), Chennai.
The reunion had individual and group photo sessions of classmates for a commemorative mug and a thanksgiving session for teachers. Of course, they had plenty of time to talk about their olden days. But the most interesting part of the event was the hour-long talk by individuals during which they shared funny moments that happened during their training days.
M. Kumaravel, Assistant Commissioner of Police, traffic, Chennai headquarters, said whenever he, along with a group of trainees, visited the Christian Medical College, they were given a salute by the security personnel there even if they did not wear the police cap and were not in their uniform.
Retired as DSP (Vellore), N. Domnic Xavier, who was the key organiser of the reunion, said that after returning from a break in Chennai to the training school once, he and a few colleagues forgot to do their short haircut — a must for trainee policemen. A pair of scissors came in handy for them to cut each other’s hair before attending the morning roll call at 5.30 a.m. But their efforts were in vain as the school instructor had found the haircut was not uniform and gave them an extended drill as a punishment.
Everyone at the reunion meet had their share of funny moments during their training period. But when the retired ADSP, Sundaramurthy, entered the corridor, everyone welcomed him, calling ‘CMC’ Sundaramurthy. The nickname has nothing to do with his work or his initials. Fellow trainees used to make fun of Sundaramurthy as he used to spend most of his leisure time during training days standing in front of CMC Hospital.
The Police Training School was started in 1896 inside the Tipu and Hyder Ali Mahals. It was used as a prison for the Mysore kings and his descendants by the British. The school trains, on an average, 300 recruits every seven months. The 1987 batch had 340 trainee SIs.
