COP PULLS BACK KIDS FROM EDGE

While analysing crime patterns, superintendent of police GRP-Indore felt the need to start Patri ki Patshala to steer children living along the railway tracks away from crime and drugs and back to classrooms, says Anuraag Singh

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THE Government Railway Police (GRP) in Madhya Pradesh’s Indore region begins most days attending to the familiar rhythm of railway policing. But in the slums that hug the railway lines of Indore, Mhow and Ujjain, the same officers have taken on a role no rulebook ever assigned them: that of teachers, counsellors and quiet reformers.

Their initiative, Patri ki Patshala—literally, “the school of the tracks”—is the brainchild of Superintendent of Police (GRP-Indore) Padam Vilochan Shukla. For him, the origins of this unusual campaign lie not in a police manual but in a memory from more than three decades ago.

“Back in 1993, when John Major visited Indore to see the slum improvement project, I was preparing for my competitive exams,” Shukla recalled. “Watching him walk into the slums, seeing how seriously the intervention was designed for the poorest families—it stayed with me. I told myself then that one day I would work for slum dwellers. The chance came only after I joined as SP-GRP in October 2025.”