Mangaluru: Demolition of Mangaluru’s 164-year-old district court building has begun, marking the end of one of the city’s oldest public structures. But a distinctive part of the old courthouse will live on. Workers are carefully dismantling the central courtroom by hand, retaining its architectural elements to reassemble them as part of the new five-storey court complex.An official from public works department (PWD) told TOI that the demolition process was labour-intensive, particularly because files had to be shifted from the region’s oldest record room.“Everything has to be done manually,” he said, adding that the process would take considerably longer than conventional demolition methods.
Shifting court records is another major part of the exercise. The old building houses around 10,000 to 20,000 files, including records dating back several decades, and these cannot simply be removed and shifted without following the prescribed procedure.The official added that the complete process could take another two months. A senior official from the district court told TOI that the files will be shifted and accommodated in the existing new complex, where some court halls are vacant. Dhanush PV, site engineer with Mugrody Constructions, the agency executing the work, told TOI that the peripheral portions of the old building were being demolished, while the central courtroom, the most distinctive surviving section of the heritage structure, is being carefully dismantled by hand.Dhanush said the central hall would be carefully dismantled, with its windows, doors, roof components, cornices and other architectural details, including the Latin writing, retained. The components will be numbered as they are removed so they can be reassembled in the same order.The dismantled components will be stored in a covered shed within the court premises at a location designated by the court. Once construction of the new building reaches the upper floor, the components will be retrieved and reassembled in their original sequence.“We dismantle and number each component before storing it. Once the new building reaches the required level, we take them out and reassemble them in the same order,” Dhanush said. The new court complex will otherwise be a new structure, with the old central courtroom recreated as part of it.PWD has documented the existing structure, including its arches, cornice work, flooring and other architectural details, Dhanush said. He said the physical demolition was expected to take some time, as the dismantling of the heritage elements would take longer because of the manual work involved.The proposed five-storey court complex is being constructed at a cost of Rs 60.2 crore. The project received administrative approval, and the tender was finalised earlier this year. The old courthouse was constructed in 1862 following the creation of a separate South Canara district.It functioned as the principal district and sessions court until the judiciary moved to the new court complex in 2014. It subsequently remained largely unused. A separate building within the premises, the public prosecutor’s office built in 1983, will also be demolished as part of the redevelopment.
