On ‘wall of frame’, Param Bir next to Nagrale & Pandey

Since then, every time an Indian Police Service officer vacates the police commissioner’s post, his photograph is put in a thick black frame and hung on the wall alongside the wooden staircase covered by a red carpet.

“If a police officer is appointed as Mumbai police commissioner for even one day, his photo will go up on that wall,” said a senior IPS officer.

Former Mumbai police commissioner A N Roy had earlier said, “It’s a tradition that is followed in uniformed forces, which helps the force remember their predecessors.”

However, the routine had come to a halt since Param Bir, who occupied the office from February 29, 2020, to March 17, 2021, was shunted out from the post of Mumbai police commissioner on March 17, 2021 by the Maha Vikas Agadi government.

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The decision to transfer him had come days after assistant police inspector Sachin Waze was arrested by the National Investigation Agency for allegedly planting explosives outside Mukesh Ambani’s residence Antilia and allegedly killing Thane resident Mansukh Hiran. Singh had then written an open letter to then CM Uddhav Thackeray, accusing then Home Minister Anil Deshmukh of setting a monthly extortion target of Rs 100 crore, due to which Deshmukh was subsequently arrested by the ED.

The officers said that given the circumstances in which Param Bir left, they did not rush to get the photos up on the ‘wall of frame’ because the wall was already full with the photo frames of 42 former Mumbai police commissioners — right from J S Barucha, who was appointed on August 15, 1947, to Sanjay Barve, who retired in 2020.

“The photos of former commissioners (till Barve) were hung on the wall of the stairs, which is used to climb the first floor of the main building. However, after Sanjay Barve retired in February 2020, there was no space left on that wall,” said a senior police officer.

After 15 months, senior police officials in the department finally decided to restart the tradition by putting the photo frames of the three outgoing commissioners — Singh, Nagrale and Pandey — together on the wall of the first floor of the same building.

“From now, we will start putting photo frames of the outgoing commissioners on the first floor,” said a senior IPS officer.