Law and order: Good planning and meticulous execution by police helps Chithirai festival pass off incident-free

The Hindu

16-05-2025

A meticulous and elaborate planning with some innovative ideas coupled with perfect execution by Madurai City Police saw the crowd-pulling Chithirai festival pass off incident-free in the last one week.
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.