Law and order: Good planning and meticulous execution by police helps Chithirai festival pass off incident-free
Having learnt from bitter lessons in the past, the police left no stones unturned right from regulating the crowd to providing them safe and secure space and keeping trouble mongers away.
'We tried to fill up all the small gaps in security arrangements to avoid untoward incidents as hundreds of thousands of people from children to aged persons turned up for the mega events like car festival (of Meenakshi Sundareswarar Temple) and Ethir sevai and the ritual of entry of Lord Kallazhagar into Vaigai river,' said Commissioner of Police, J. Loganathan.
After having made the decisions at the drawing board, the police officials had a thorough follow up with officials of all departments concerned to i implement the time-consuming work.
The Corporation officials removed encroachments from roadsides and took up patch works on the road. Engineers of Highways Department cleaned up the dug-up Alagarkoil Road from Tamukkam to Goripalayam and also covered the under-construction sites and scaffolding to make them out of bounds for the enthusiastic crowd of devotees.
The police also drew elaborate arrangement for jam-packed crowd that would stay put on Alagarkoil Road along Prasanna Venkatachalapathy Temple where Lord Kallazhagar stays for Tirumanjanam ritual.
Filtering trouble-mongers
To keep the trouble mongers away, the police had different layers of picketing at multiple points on all roads leading towards Tamukkam and Goripalayam junction.
'Men in civvies were deployed at 51 tracks to filter drunk persons, crime offenders and trouble mongers. These teams were able to pick up some 60 persons and also seize some weapons much before these people could mingle in the crowd,' Mr. Longanathan said.
These people could have created some nuisance like harassing women if they had got into the crowd.
Similarly, some 100 CCTV cameras were erected on this stretch. 'These cameras with artificial intelligence facility were put up to detect a long list of history-sheeters and property offenders from across the State.
Six drones were set off in the air by the police to have an aerial view of the choc-o-bloc crowd. 'We were able to alert the nearest police teams around to manage the crowd throughout the night at Tamukkam and also on the Vaigai riverbed,' he added.
Watch on Vaigai water
The police also kept a watch on the depth of water flowing in the Vaigai riverbed so that it did not pose danger to the devotees wading through it to have a glimpse of Lord Kallazhagar. Despite that, teams of firemen and swimmers from police were deployed at vantage points to rescue people in distress as a precautionary measure.
The Commissioner said that the identity tags distributed among hundreds of children paid off. 'Though only one incident of the police having to restore a missing child with its parents happened in the entire Chithirai festival, the very tying of tags by police made the parents more conscious in taking care of the children in the crowd,' he added.
The QR codes displayed in over 100 places came handy for three persons to contact the police during emergency.
The Commissioner said that a gangway put for the second year helped the massive crowd of devotees from Goripalayam junction to trickle into riverbed via Moongilkadai Street smoothly without interrupting the pathway of the deity.
'This helped melting of crowd without any resistance at the junction,' he added.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hindu
2 hours ago
- The Hindu
Afghan man arrested in Jabalpur for ‘illegally' obtaining Indian passport, running racket; two others held too
The Madhya Pradesh Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) has arrested a man from Afghanistan for allegedly getting an Indian passport using forged documents and two of his accomplices from Jabalpur, police said on Friday (August 1, 2025). As per a statement from the M.P. Police, the accused — identified as Sohbat Khan, currently residing in Jabalpur, Dinesh Garg and Mahendra Kumar Sukhdan, both residents of Jabalpur — were arrested based on a tip off received by the city unit of the ATS. Mr. Garg is a forest guard in the Forest Guard and has been working in the election cell of the Jabalpur Collectorate for the past two years, the police said. 'The Jabalpur unit of the ATS had received a tip off from an informer that some Afghanistan nationals were living illegally in the city. Sohbat was living illegally in Jabalpur for the last 10 years and he had also married a local woman,' the police said. Apart from having obtained his own passport using fake documents, Mr. Khan was also getting Indian passports made for his Afghan friends living in West Bengal and Chhattisgarh by preparing documents on wrong addresses in Jabalpur and taking money for them, the police added. 'So far, the ATS has received information about about 20 such Afghan youths whose passports were tried to be made from Jabalpur addresses, out of which passports of Akbar and Iqbal, residents of West Bengal, have been made from fake addresses of Jabalpur,' it said, adding that information about transactions of about ₹10 lakh has been obtained so far. The police said that Mr. Khan is being questioned to find out about the people helping him in securing police verification, fake addresses from the post office and other necessary documents required for passports.
NDTV
4 hours ago
- NDTV
NIA Arrests 2nd Suspect In Killing Of 6 Meiteis Including 3 Children In Manipur's Jiribam
New Delhi: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has made a second consecutive arrest in the case of killing of three Meitei women and three children in Manipur's Jiribam district in November 2024. The NIA arrested Lalrosang Hmar alias Rosang from Mizoram's capital Aizawl on Thursday, the NIA said. He is a resident of Assam's Cachar district, neighbouring Jiribam. The first accused, Thanglienlal Hmar, was also arrested yesterday from Aizawl by a joint NIA-Assam Police team. Lalrosang was an active conspirator in the crime; the NIA recovered a mobile phone and a SIM card from him, which will be examined, the NIA said. The arrest comes three weeks after the Manipur High Court ordered the NIA to give a report on the case, and three days after it ordered the NIA to file a chargesheet within a month. The members of the Meitei community who were kidnapped from Jiribam, a district bordering Assam, and whose mutilated bodies were found floating in a river days later, were Yumrembam Rani Devi (60), Telem Thoibi Devi (31) and her daughter Telem Thajamanbi Devi (8), Laishram Heithoibi Devi (25) and her two children Laishram Chingkheinganba Singh (2.5 years old) and Laishram Lamnganba Singh (10 months old). At that time, the Manipur cabinet in a resolution had called the suspects "Kuki militants". The arrested suspect, however, belongs to the Hmar tribe, a distinct tribe and not part of the Kuki nomenclature. The Kukis in Manipur along with the Zomi and Hmar tribes have been rallying behind the banner of "Kuki-Zo" since ethnic violence with the Meiteis began in May 2023. The women and children were kidnapped from Jiribam's Bokobera neighbourhood while another group of militants were engaged in a gunfight with the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF). Ten of the militants were shot dead in the encounter.
The Hindu
6 hours ago
- The Hindu
Encounters breaks out in J&K's Kulgam
Security forces on Friday (August 1, 2025) evening engaged a group of hiding terrorists in a firefight in the jungles of south Kashmir's Kulgam. 'An encounter has started at Akhal area of Kulgam (in south Kashmir). The police's Special Operations Group (SOG), Army and CRPF are on job,' a police spokesman said. The number of terrorists hiding at the encounter site could not be immediately confirmed. The encounter comes just days after the security forces killed all the three terrorists involved in the Pahalgam terror attack in an encounter at Srinagar's Dachigam area. Friday's encounter also took place on a day when Director General of Police (DGP) Nalin Prabhat and Inspector General of Police, Kashmir Zone, V.K. Birdi, visited Kulgam. A police spokesman said the top brass visited the district 'to assess the security situation' They held an operational review with GOC Victor Force and other officers of J&K Police and Army. During the review, the DGP directed the officers to analyse and reassess the existing strategies and recalibrate the offensive operations to neutralise Pakistani terrorists. DGP Prabhat toured areas like D.H. Pora, Devsar and Kund during the tour. Meanwhile, three suspects were held along with arms and ammunition in south Kashmir's Anantnag district. Officials said a joint team of police, Army's 19 Rashtriya Rifles and CRPF's 96 Battalion during routine checking at Krad Uttersoo stopped a Alto car. 'During searches, three suspects were arrested after one pistol, grenade and 41 rounds of AK-47 were recovered from their possession,' the police said. The police identified the suspects as Ishfaq Ahmad Bhat of Koel, Pulwama; Ishan Akram of Medora, Awantipora, and Waseem Rehman Sheikh, a resident of Medora Awantipora.
