Another important matter in the legislative sphere was the passing of the Bombay City Police Act IV of 1902, which consolidated the provisions of the preceding enactments and vested the whole control of the police force in the Commissioner. The Act removed the difficulties of which Mr. Kennedy had complained in 1898, and furnished the police with all the legal authority required for the performance of watch and ward duties, the investigation of offences, and the arrest and detention of wrong-doers.
During the first decade of the twentieth century the volume of crime steadily increased. The annual average number of cases for the quinquennial periods ending in 1900 and 1905 was respectively 32,411 and 30,814: in 1908 the police dealt with nearly 41,000 cases. The number of persons arrested likewise increased from 37,000 in 1900 to 44,000 in 1908, while the number of convictions secured in 1908 was 41,500, as compared with 19,900 in 1880 and 34,450 in 1900. The value of property stolen in 1880 was estimated at Rs. 146,000; in 1900 at Rs. 333,000; and in 1908 at Rs. 353,000; while the percentage of recoveries during Mr. Gell’s régime decreased from 59 in 1902 to 37 in 1905 and rose again to 56 in 1908. The annual migration of the people to plague-camps during the hot months still offered special facilities to the professional house-breaker, and was occasionally responsible, as in 1903, for an abnormal number of thefts. A somewhat similar epidemic of robberies resulted from the immigration of famine-stricken refugees in 1906. Many of these cases defied investigation, as they were not immediately reported; and in the case of thefts from houses temporarily vacated during the season of heavy plague-mortality, the losses were often not reported to the police until the owners returned two or three months afterwards to their homes.
These failures, which may be ascribed in some measure to the absence of a proper beat-system, were counter-balanced by the capture of two notorious professional house-breakers, one of whom was a Parsi, Nanabhai Dinshaw Daruwala, and the other a Borah named Tyebali Alibhai. Nanabhai was a criminal of more than ordinary courage and address, who had gathered around him a gang of clever assistants and had contrived to defy justice for more than twenty years. He had amassed considerable wealth by his house-breaking exploits, and as he spent his ill-gotten gains freely and was ready to pay ample hush-money, he secured immunity from arrest for many years. His capture was long sought without success. But at last, in 1907, the detective police managed to run him to ground, and, despite the offer of heavy bribes for his release, secured his conviction and imprisonment for a long term of years. The Borah, Tyebali, was a man of much less ability, and confined his attention almost entirely to the houses of respectable residents on Malabar Hill. In this area he carried out a series of daring robberies both by day and night, and had disposed of much valuable plate and jewellery before he was finally arrested and convicted in 1908.
Hardly a year passed without one or more murders, the number which occurred in 1902 and 1904 being respectively 18 and 20. Most of them were of the usual type—murder for the purpose of robbery or as the punishment of a wife or mistress for infidelity. With a few exceptions, all these cases were successfully investigated by the detective branch of the force. A prolonged and complicated series of forgeries, devised and carried out by eighteen men possessed of education and private means, was cleverly brought home to the culprits by Superintendent Sloane, who was appointed head of the detective branch on the retirement of the Sirdar Mir Abdul Ali in 1903.[110]
Neither the divisional nor the detective police, however, succeeded in discovering the origin of the disastrous cotton-fires which took place at Colaba in 1906. The value of the cotton destroyed or rendered unsaleable was estimated at 40 lakhs of rupees. Since that date similar conflagrations have occurred at intervals, in circumstances which seem to justify more than a suspicion of deliberate incendiarism. But in spite of special precautions and special police arrangements no practical proof of complicity has ever been obtained. In 1913 these fires at the Colaba cotton-green were so frequent and so disastrous that the Bombay Government appointed a special committee under the chairmanship of Mr. S. M. Edwardes, the Commissioner of Police at that date, to investigate the circumstances and origin of the conflagrations and make proposals for minimising the risk of them in future. The result of that committee’s enquiry will be mentioned on a later page; but it may be here stated that on each occasion of these wholesale conflagrations at the old Colaba cotton-green the police found it very difficult to initiate and prosecute inquiries about firms or individuals, suspected of aiding and abetting incendiarism, owing to the disinclination of the insurance companies, with whom the cotton was insured, to assist the inquiries or register a formal complaint in respect of their losses. The system of underwriting adopted by all the fire insurance companies in Bombay resulted in the net loss incurred in any fire being divided among so many parties that the actual sum paid out by the company concerned was comparatively trivial, and did not, in their view, justify the adoption of proceedings, which might have frightened the cotton-merchants into refusing to insure their goods with them in future. Consequently, the only chance the police had of discovering an offence was to arrest an incendiary in flagrante delicto, and this was rendered practically impossible by the character of the cotton, which will smoulder unseen for some time before it bursts into flame, by the enormous width and height of the stacks of cotton-bales, crowded on far too small an area on the edge of a main thoroughfare, and by the ease with which any person could escape detection in the labyrinth formed by the various jethas or collections of bales.
The question of traffic regulation in the streets demanded attention during this period. By 1903 the number of public and private conveyances in Bombay had risen to nearly 16,000, and although the style and condition of the victorias plying for hire showed considerable improvement,[111] rash driving was exceedingly common and street accidents had largely increased. The position was aggravated by a steady rise in the number of motor-vehicles, necessitating the creation of a special branch of the police-force for the registration of motor-cars and the issue of driving-licenses. One of the first owners of a car in Bombay during the closing years of the nineteenth century was the late Mr. B. H. Hewitt, one of the Municipal Engineers; and after 1900 his example was followed by a constantly increasing number of residents, some of whom showed a tendency to drive at excessive speed and to pay little attention to the orders of the police on traffic-duty. Thus, between 1905 and 1907 more than 900 new motor-cars appeared on the streets, and in the latter year the traffic-problem was further complicated by the abolition of the old horse-tramcars and the opening on May 7th of the electric tramways.
In these circumstances the incapacity of the average Indian constable to regulate traffic in the European manner became more marked, and some of the Divisional Superintendents had to spend more time than they could really spare in trying to inculcate an aptitude for directing and controlling pedestrian and wheeled traffic. Their efforts were not very successful, and it was generally felt that, although a few Indian officers and constables had profited by tuition and showed improvement in this branch of their duties, the presence of European police was absolutely essential at crowded points during the busy hours of the day. As previously remarked, the difficulties of the Indian constable were much aggravated by the studied disregard of his orders and warnings, frequently shown by his own compatriots.
As regards the beggar nuisance, Mr. Gell was disposed to continue the policy of his predecessor; and accordingly in 1902 he deported no less than 10,000 mendicants, mostly belonging to the territories of Indian Princes. But this procedure was peremptorily forbidden by Government in the following year, on the grounds that deportees of this class were prolific disseminators of plague infection. After 1903, therefore, the expulsion of beggars ceased, with the result that Bombay became once again a popular resort for penurious and homeless vagrants from all parts of India.
Efforts to rid Bombay of the foreign procurers, who subsisted on the traffic in European women, continued unabated. In 1902 the Commissioner deported 29 of these rascals; in 1903, 30; in 1904, 20; and in 1905, 2. No action was recorded in 1906 and 1907, but ten men were deported in 1908. These figures indicate in some measure the dimensions of the traffic and the lucrative nature of the business. The prospect of trivial profits would scarcely have persuaded 81 aliens within a period of four years to risk the chances of arrest and deportation. The history and description of these foreigners were recorded in the files of the detective branch, and in most cases their finger-print impressions were taken by the Criminal Identification Bureau, which under the auspices of Mr. Kirtikar and his assistant was rapidly acquiring a reputation for useful work.
The daily work of the police in the courts was directly affected by the establishment in 1904 of three benches of honorary magistrates in Girgaum, Mazagon and Dadar, which were intended to afford relief to the Chief Presidency Magistrate, Mr. J. Sanders Slater, and his three colleagues in the disposal of unimportant police cases. A fourth bench was established at the Esplanade Police Court in 1908, to deal with petty cases from the Harbour and Docks. These benches were empowered to deal with cases arising under certain sections of the Bombay City Police Act, the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, the Public Conveyance Act, the Gambling Act, the Railways Act, and under section 352 of the Indian Penal Code. They proved very convenient to the police of the outlying F and G divisions, who were formerly obliged to bring offenders and witnesses all the way to the stipendiary court in Mazagon, but they involved much extra work for the European police officers of the various sections, who had frequently to attend both the stipendiary and honorary magistrates’ courts. The latter commenced their work daily at 8-45 a.m., and the stipendiary courts at 11 a.m., so that European officers of busy sections had often to spend most of the working day in the courts. During their absence the registration and investigation of complaints at the police-station had perforce to remain in abeyance. One of the most urgent requirements during Mr. Gell’s Commissionership was the creation of properly equipped and staffed police-stations, at which, no matter what the volume of work in the courts, at least one superior police officer would be found on duty at any hour of the day or night, ready to record complaints and initiate inquiries. The establishment of the benches of honorary magistrates served to accentuate the inadequacy of the old police system and the inability of the force to cope with a greatly increased volume of case-work.