Two new police stations will man city's IT Corridor

BENGALURU: Two new police stations ­ Marathahalli and Bellandur ­ have started functioning under the newly-created Whitefield Police Division, which will cater exclusively to the rapidly-growing IT corridor.
“The Whitefield division was created keeping in mind the huge number of IT professionals in the area. This part of the city has witnessed unprecedented growth with software companies, BPOs, apartments and malls. The population has increased as well as crimes,“ said M Narayan, a 2006-batch Karnataka Police Service officer who has been appointed DCP of the division. He was previously the Bengaluru Rural assistant police superintendent.

Creation of a new police division was part of a re structuring proposed by former city police commissioner NS Megharikh to distribute workload. For instance, some police stations covered a jurisdiction of 50-60 km while some had smaller limits. In 2015, the government abolished the Excise and Lottery wing and the two SP-rank officers there were used to create the posts of DCP Traffic (North) and DCP Whitefield. The Whitefield division also comprises police stations at Whitefield, Kadugodi, Varthur, Mahadevapura, KR Puram and HAL, all of which were previously under the southeast division.In fact, the southeast division itself was created in 2006 to cater to the IT population.

While the Marathahalli police station is functioning out of the HAL Airport police station premises, the Bellandur station is housed in the HSR Layout police station. Both are awaiting their own buildings.

The division was long overdue given the way the software hub has grown, Whitefield Rising member Anupama Kilaru said. “Lots of PGs have come up for working women and they need security . Besides crimes against women, there has been an increase in cybercrimes and economic frauds. With the new division, we expect more focussed policing.“