MUMBAI: The tiger looks slightly surprised. Who could blame him? Not only was he shot and stuffed, but to add insult to injury, he's been left to moulder in the small museum within the grounds of the Mumbai Police headquarters opposite Crawford Market.
The stuffed feline (its left ear crumbling away) is just one of the exhibits at the museum, which seems to have seen better days.
"Switch on the light," says one of the eight or so female sweepers catching a break in a shaded corridor. The murky light goes on, one standard fan spins ineffectually and you get to wander around the largely unlabelled collections of knives, guns and uniforms.
The museum could do with some revamping: a list of city police commissioners starting with Frank Souter (the first commissioner of police when the job was separated from the municipal commissioner's in 1865) ends prematurely in the year 2000.
And the graph of zones within the city shows just seven (there are 12 now). ACP M B Kurne, the police press relations officer, says he is planning to update the displays soon.
As with other civic museums, that seem to have been created and then forgotten, there are random collections of objects carelessly exhibited, including a glass case of dossiers labelled thus: 'Case of CBT in 1968'; 'Murder Case of Iraqui National'; 'Murder Case of Truck Driver (Sensational Case Known as Supari Case���Beetle Nut Case'.
Spelling mistakes aside, wouldn't it be more interesting if there were some details about those cases? Not every visitor, presumably, is a local Sherlock Holmes who can rub his chin reflectively and muse on the remembered intricacies of the Beetle Nut Case.
The woman police constable posted here (she's had no training to show visitors around, but says she's learned by reading the placards) says the museum sees some visitors, including schoolchildren.
There are also placards briefly explaining the force's history and its descent from the 1661 Bhandari Militia Bombay City Police.
But there's little attempt at showing the size and reach of the force today, the duties police officers carry out, the different communities represented in the force, the quarters they live in and how they fit into the city's life.