Police (Special Duty) Medal

Awarded to police personnel for servive in harsh climatic conditions. In most cases, these medals have not been officially manufactured and issued, but were, instead, made locally by independent manufacturers and the policemen can either buy them from these shops or the battalions buy it and give it to the qualifying constables. This gives rise to great variability in manufacture and even in design details. All bars observed have been inscribed in English, rather than in Hindi and the medals are issued unnamed.

Established: 23 February 1962 by the President of India (with effect from 1 January 1959).

Obverse: Circular 39-mm copper-nickel, the national emblem within an ornate wreath. Suspended by an ornate straight-bar suspender. The medal has not been observed named.

Reverse: A low-relief depiction of the high Himayalas, labeled below left as "GANGOTRI". Above, the curved Hindi legend "Police Katin Seva Padak" [Police Special Service Medal] appears.

Ribbon:  34.5 mm, white, with a series of 4 mm stripes: red, yellow, green, red, yellow, green. White 1.5 mm, red 4 mm, white 1.5 mm,. yellow 4 mm, white 1.5 mm, green 4 mm, white 1.5 mm, red 4 mm, white 1.5 mm, yellow 4 mm, white 1.5 mm, green 4 mm, white 1.5 mm. As it has been so common and so widely produced, there is some variability of the precise shades of the colors in this ribbon. These color variations have no significance (as some have stated).

Outline:

  • Chandigarh
  • Gujarat
  • Himachal Pradesh
  • J&K (unofficial variant of "Jammu & Kashmir" bar)
  • Jammu & Kashmir
  • Manipur
  • Meghalaya
  • Mizoram
  • Nagaland
  • Punjab
  • Rajasthan
  • Tripura