Page:Vizagapatam.djvu/226

VIZAGAPATAM Companies of sibbandis were maintained to keep order in certain tracts, notably Golgonda. The present police force was organized gradually from 1861 onwards under Act XXIV of 1859, many of the former establishment (whose inams were enfranchised in 1862) joining the new department, and the sibbandi corps being incorporated with it. The town police were main- tained, but on a different basis, being paid from municipal funds for some years. There are now two Superintendents and three Assistant Superintendents in the district. One Superintendent (whose appointment was sanctioned in 1864) has charge of the Koraput division and is helped by an Assistant who usually has immediate control of the Jeypore and Malkanagiri taluks; and the other takes the rest of the district and has Assistants at Narasapatam and Párvatípur who take off his shoulders the direct charge of all but the five  taluks noted in the brackets (Bimlipatam, Chípurupalle, Gajapatinagaram, Vizagapatam, Vizianagaram). Statistics of the force appear in the separate Appendix. The risk of trouble in the Agency necessitates the upkeep of four bodies of reserve police (who are dressed in a workmanliKe  khaki uniform with putties and green turbans and are armed with Lee-Metfords) at Vizagapatam, Párvatípur, Koraput and Chintapalle in the Golgonda Agency. This last reserve was established after the fitúri of 1886 (see p. 251) by concentrating the stations formerly existing at Koyyúr, Lammasingi and Gúdem.

The district possesses 23 sub-jails, one at the head-quarters of each of the sub-magistrates except Vizagapatam, in which latter place the District Jail accommodates the under-trial prisoners.

The Koraput sub-jail contains accommodation for as many as 87 prisoners, is under the charge of the Assistant Surgeon and sends its returns to the Inspector- General of Prisons, instead of to the District Magistrate. It was originally enlarged in 1873—75 at a cost of Rs. 7,000 on the motion of Mr. H. G. Turner, then Divisional Officer at Koraput, who represented with much earnestness (what had long been well known) that hill men dreaded being sent to the Vizagapatam jail as much as ordinary criminals feared transportation across the seas, and also died in large numbers from the abrupt change of climate. When he became Agent, Mr. Turner proposed that the building should be reconstructed in pucka material and enlarged still further, and in 1892 estimates were sanctioned accordingly. The work was 206