Leaky, dingy, tiny: Why Mumbai cops are not happy with the homes they got

There are not enough houses for India's police personnel and those who do have accommodation are highly dissatisfied with it, said a recent report by the Bureau of Police Research & Development

For the last 24 years, police clerk Deepika Sawant* has been living in a 180-sq ft flat, barely the size of four ATM kiosks put together, in a police colony adjoining the Saki Naka police station in Andheri, a west Mumbai suburb.

In July this year, water seeped into her third-floor flat, damaging her TV, ceiling fan and her bed. “It was like a waterfall inside our house,” Sawant said, “There was water coming in through every corner of the house. We did not know what to do.”

Sawant along with her husband and daughter then had to