Cookware, clothes and goats: Inside Delhi’s first-ever police reports

Delhi Police’s earliest First Information Reports (FIRs) offer a rare window into life and crime in 19th-century Delhi. The very first FIR, lodged on October 18, 1861, at the Sabzi Mandi Police Station, recorded the theft of three large and three small cooking vessels, a bowl, a hookah, a kulfi and some women’s clothes from the home of a resident named Maeeuddin.

The total value of the stolen goods was 45 annas — roughly Rs 2.81 at the time.

Written in the Shikasta Urdu script, the original document now hangs framed in the Delhi Police Museum, preserved as an artefact of the city’s past.

Other early FIRs reveal equally curious cases — the theft of a pair of pyjamas worth five annas in 1897, or 11 oranges stolen in 1891. One report recorded the uprooting of a keekar tree valued at Rs 1 from a public thoroughfare; another documented the theft of goats in Mehrauli.

These records highlight how even the most minor or domestic matters were treated with formality and seriousness. They also reflect the largely rural and household setting of Delhi in the 19th century and the official use of Urdu and Persian in public documents.

Long before wireless sets, PCR vans and traffic constables with reflective jackets, Delhi’s law and order relied on a small cadre of men on foot and a handful on horseback. The story of the city’s policing begins not in the Capital itself, but in the aftermath of India’s first major uprising of 1857.

Following the revolt, which deeply shook British authority, the colonial government recognised the need for a structured and uniform police system. The result was the Indian Police Act of 1861, which laid the foundation for an organised force across British India. At the time, Delhi was still part of Punjab, and for decades its policing came under the jurisdiction of the Punjab Police.

When Delhi was declared the Capital of India in 1912, a new administrative era began. That same year, the first Chief Commissioner of Delhi was appointed, vested with the powers of an Inspector-General of Police — a move that gave the city’s police a distinct identity, albeit still linked to Punjab.

According to the Gazette of 1912, Delhi’s policing landscape was modest but structured. The district came under the charge of a Deputy Inspector-General (DIG) based in Ambala, with a Superintendent and a Deputy Superintendent heading the local force. The entire establishment consisted of just two Inspectors, 27 Sub-Inspectors, 110 Head Constables, 985 Foot Constables, and 28 sawars (mounted policemen) — a small force for a growing Capital.

Police stations were few but pivotal. Kotwali, Sabzi Mandi, and Paharganj formed the city’s central triangle of control, while the rural belt was administered by two Inspectors based in Sonepat and Ballabgarh, who oversaw ten police stations, seven outposts, and four road posts.

The Civil Lines area housed “spacious police barracks”, accommodating the Reserve, Armed Reserve, and recruits in training — a colonial precursor to today’s police academies.

In those early decades, Delhi’s constables often wore turbans instead of caps, patrolled on horseback, and worked without wireless communication. Yet their presence laid the institutional foundations for what would, in time, become one of India’s most complex and modern metropolitan police forces.