The history of Delhi Police is also a history of how the capital’s government, population and urban responsibilities have expanded. From a single kotwal operating from the area now known as Mehrauli to an organisation spread across six ranges, 15 police districts and 209 police stations, the institution has repeatedly been reshaped by political change, migration, population growth and administrative reform.
According to information cited from Delhi Police’s official website in a report by Jagran, the city’s policing history began around 1237, when Malik-ul-Umra Fakhruddin became Delhi’s first kotwal. The office existed within the political and administrative order of the time, when the kotwal was responsible for maintaining order in and around the capital. The headquarters was located at Qila Rai Pithora, in present-day Mehrauli.
That origin is significant because it places policing within the city’s changing geography. Delhi’s centres of power shifted over centuries, and the institutions responsible for public order shifted with them. When Shah Jahan moved the imperial capital from Agra to Delhi in 1648, Gaznafar Khan was appointed the city’s new kotwal. The appointment reflected the importance of policing a capital whose political, commercial and residential functions were expanding around a new seat of power.
The kotwal system ended after the uprising of 1857. Gangadhar Nehru, identified in the supplied report as Delhi’s last kotwal, held the position during that period. His later family connections have made the episode a recurring part of Delhi’s political and social history: he was the father of Motilal Nehru and grandfather of Jawaharlal Nehru. Through Jawaharlal Nehru’s daughter Indira Gandhi and her grandson Rahul Gandhi, the last kotwal’s family history is linked to one of India’s most prominent political families.
The family connection is the most recognisable element of the account, but the institutional transition after 1857 is more important for understanding the modern city. The British introduced the Indian Police Act in 1861, replacing the earlier kotwal arrangement with a more formal police structure. This change brought policing into a standardised administrative framework and laid the basis for an organisation that could be expanded, divided and managed through modern government departments.
The transformation was gradual rather than immediate. For a period, Delhi and Punjab Police operated as a combined unit. The 1912 arrangement, described in the report with reference to a Delhi gazette, placed Delhi district police under the control of a deputy inspector general whose headquarters was in Ambala. The force also had a superintendent and deputy superintendent of police, along with two inspectors, 27 sub-inspectors, 110 head constables, 985 constables and 28 mounted police personnel.
These numbers provide an early view of the scale and limits of policing in the capital. The structure was hierarchical, but the force was small by contemporary standards. Before Independence, Delhi city had only three police stations: Kotwali, Sabzi Mandi and Paharganj. Police personnel were accommodated in large barracks in Civil Lines, including facilities for reserve, armed reserve and newly recruited personnel.
The geography of those stations also offers a glimpse of the older city. Kotwali represented the historic administrative and commercial core, while Sabzi Mandi and Paharganj served areas that connected the central city to markets, neighbourhoods and transport routes. A police network built around three stations could function only in a city that was far smaller and less administratively complex than the Delhi of today.
That older arrangement came under pressure during the final years of colonial rule and the years immediately after Independence. Delhi Police was reorganised in 1946, and the size of the force reportedly doubled. Partition then brought a large influx of people into Delhi. The population movement created new demands for public order, settlement management and emergency administration at a time when the city was already undergoing political and economic disruption.
The report states that crime increased rapidly in Delhi in 1948 and that the first inspector general of police was appointed on 16 February that year. The police force grew to 8,000 personnel during this period. By 1961, its strength had risen to 12,000. These figures show how policing capacity expanded alongside the capital’s changing population and responsibilities, although the supplied material does not provide comparable population, crime or workload data for each period.
The expansion also led to new questions about administrative design. In 1956, the post of deputy inspector general of police was created. The Government of India subsequently established the Delhi Police Commission under Justice G.D. Khosla. Based on its recommendations, the city’s police administration was reorganised into four districts: North, Central, South and New Delhi.
Districting is not simply an internal bureaucratic exercise. It determines how responsibility is distributed across the city, how senior officers supervise local stations and how the administration responds to neighbourhoods with different land uses and populations. New Delhi, for example, carries the responsibilities of a national capital district, while other parts of the city combine dense residential areas, markets, industrial activity, transport corridors and rapidly urbanising edges. Dividing the city into districts was therefore part of adapting the police organisation to a more differentiated urban landscape.
The next major institutional shift came on 1 July 1978, when the police commissioner system was introduced in Delhi. This created the foundation of the present commissionerate model. The system concentrated greater executive authority in the office of the police commissioner, an arrangement intended to allow faster administrative and operational decisions in a large metropolitan area.
The move towards a commissionerate reflected a broader change in the nature of Delhi itself. The capital was no longer only an administrative centre with a compact historic core. It had become a large metropolitan region with extensive residential growth, major government institutions, expanding road networks and increasing movement of people and goods. A police system designed for a small city could not remain unchanged as the built environment and the scale of daily mobility grew.
The report also refers to the recommendations of the Srivastava Committee, after which Delhi Police’s sanctioned strength was increased to more than 76,000 personnel. The current structure is described as comprising six ranges, 15 police districts and 209 police stations. Compared with the three stations that existed before Independence, the expansion illustrates the administrative challenge of policing a city whose functions extend well beyond its historic centre.
However, the number of stations or personnel alone does not explain whether an urban police system is effective. The supplied material does not provide data on response times, case disposal, station-level workloads, vacancies, gender composition, cybercrime capacity or the distribution of personnel across districts. It also does not establish how the present strength compares with the city’s population or daily floating population. Those measures would be necessary to assess whether institutional expansion has kept pace with the demands of metropolitan life.
The historical sequence does show one consistent pattern: Delhi’s police structure has changed after major disruptions or shifts in the city’s role. The end of the kotwal system followed the upheaval of 1857. The formal police structure developed after the Indian Police Act of 1861. The force expanded after Partition and the rise in post-Independence pressures. District reorganisation followed the recommendations of a central commission, and the commissionerate system arrived as Delhi’s metropolitan responsibilities became more pronounced.
This makes Delhi Police’s history relevant to urban governance beyond the question of who held the title of kotwal. Policing is one of the systems through which the city’s growth becomes administratively visible. New neighbourhoods, changing migration patterns, larger transport networks, public events and expanding commercial areas all require decisions about jurisdiction, staffing, command and infrastructure.
The account also shows why institutional memory matters. The modern force may operate through police districts, ranges and stations, but it remains layered over older geographies and political histories. Areas such as Mehrauli, Civil Lines, Paharganj and the old Kotwali continue to connect the present city with earlier administrative arrangements. Understanding those layers can help explain why the capital’s police infrastructure is distributed as it is and why reform has repeatedly followed changes in the city’s scale.
The immediate trigger for the Jagran report was Delhi Police’s participation in an online trend using original photographs from the 1980s. The images showed women police personnel practising firing, officers taking part in parades, senior officials receiving salutes, police personnel using wireless equipment in cars and personnel standing near vehicle convoys. The post drew attention to the organisation’s past, but the larger historical record shows that Delhi Police’s evolution is not only a story of old photographs. It is a record of how a capital city builds and rebuilds its systems of public administration.
The available evidence confirms the broad institutional transition from the kotwal arrangement to a formal, district-based commissionerate system. It also establishes the scale of expansion from three pre-Independence police stations to 209 stations today, as cited in the report. What remains unclear from the supplied material is how effectively that expansion has translated into improved public service, accountability and operational capacity. Those questions require current official data and comparative evidence, but they are central to understanding the next phase of policing in Delhi.
