‘Taanakkaran’ screened for fresh police recruits in TN

Chennai: The Tamil movie ‘Taanakkaran’ which narrates the story of tough, sometimes brutal, training practices for the police personnel in Tamil Nadu, is being screened at all Police Recruitment Schools across the state, to mainly show the 10,000-odd fresh constable recruits that their training programme is not as harsh as in the cinema.

‘Taanakkaran’, a Vikram Prabhu starrer, prompted the IG of police, (training) A Arun to set up complaint/ suggestion boxes in all 43 Police Recruitment Schools. “The keys for all the complaint boxes have been kept in the training HQ in Chennai and those boxes will be opened only at the IG office,” a senior officer from the training wing said. Tamizh, the movie’s director, also held an interactive session with the constable recruits in Chennai during the screening of his film.

“The officers and fresh recruits said there is no severe physical training nowadays at the training schools,” said Tamizh when this newspaper contacted him. He further explained that his movie was based more on the real experience of old timers.

Senior officers had personally interacted with cadets under training in five training schools across the state after the movie was screened last week. “Nobody thinks that the current training system is that severe. In fact, they are happy with the schedule. Fresh recruits are allowed to use cell phones only for one-and-a-half hours during the evening and not more so that they are not glued to the gadgets for the whole night. This will impact their training schedule for the next day,” a senior officer said.

Of the 10,000 plus fresh recruits, around 3,000 are women. “Some of them are new mothers. They are allowed to interact with their family through video calls,” the officer added. Even weekend trips are being allowed for cadets during the seven-month training period.

“It is a great thing to make a movie based purely on police training. Nobody has done that so far. But when compared to the present training system, what is shown in the movie is not realistic,” the officer noted.