THE INDIAN POLICE.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—In your issue of August 20th Mr. J. W. Pennington points out that the Indian Police is not a homogeneous body, but that each province has its own police. In another respect the Indian Police is not homogeneous. In India generally, as in former days in England, each village or hamlet has its own policeman, nominated, but not appointed, by the villagers and paid by them. Every fifty to a hundred houses, every two hundred and fifty to five hundred of the population, have a policeman, just as each parish had its constable in former days in England. To supervise these village police, each police district or division has a superior police officer, with twelve or more constables in uniform to support him, stationed at some central point. A police district may have a popula- tion of one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand, with a village police force of two hundred to four hundred men, controlled by one or two superior police officers with their bodyguard of constables, paid by Government, and enrolled in a regular police force. As long as so large a proportion of the Indian Police consists of village constables, paid and largely controlled by the villagers themselves, Indian rather than Western methods of investigation must prevail.—I am,
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