CALCUTTA, SEPT 18: In 1911, Charles Tegart, the first Deputy Commissioner of Police, Special Branch, Calcutta, wrote a letter to then Chief Secretary of Bengal government for sanction of Rs 3,000. The reason: Tegart, who later became the police commissioner and was dreaded and hated by revolutionaries, wanted to buy two cars as his department had only horse carriages and he found it difficult to carry out department's work with that.Then there was an order to keep a watch on the movements and activities of people like Aurobindo Ghosh, Ullaskar Dutta, even Rabindranath Tagore. These and numerous other files pertaining to the Freedom Struggle of India would be converted, for the first time, into CD-Rom by the Special Branch of Calcutta Police and would be available to researchers.This was revealed to The Indian Express by M K Singh, the DCP, after a function marking the Raising Day of this unit of the Calcutta police. ``We have delivered many of our files to the Central Archives but there are many others which have tremendous historical value but are decaying. Unless they are preserved, they will be extinct soon,'' Singh said. ``We have microfilmed many of them and are planning to have an archive of our own where researchers will have access to all those files on computer,'' Singh said.The principal task of the Special Branch has been to tackle any force that is inimical to the safety and sovereignty of the country. Broadly, the task remains the same today but now it is entrusted with the task of tackling foreign agencies intending to destabilise the country. It has got another formidable task too: to provide protection to the VIPs here and those visiting the city.The stories about the Special Branch, some apocryphal and some real, are legendary. During the Raj, it became the place where the revolutionaries were brought and tortured in the most inhuman way. ``My 91-year-old father, who was a freedom fighter, tells me that during the British period, after evening nobody dared pass this road. And if anybody did, he would hear wails and cries from inside the building,'' Brajeswar Bhattacharya, an Assistant Commissioner of police, SB, said. ``But those days are gone. We want to project a new image now,'' Bhattacharya said.The idea of observing the Raising Day - for the first time since its inception in 1911 - occurred to the present Commissioner of Police, Calcutta, Dinesh Vajpai. ``The Commissioner thought we should interact more, that the officers should come close to the men on some occasions,'' Singh said.``We had plans to organise an exhibition also and contacted some event managers but their estimate was high,'' said Singh. ``So we gave it up but next year, we would definitely have some thing of that kind,'' he said.Bhattacharya said that the number of personnel, 2,500, was not enough to carry out their work. ``These days, different foreign agencies are active here and we need more people to take them on as well as provide security to the dignitaries,'' he said.
