New Delhi

Who is to be blamed?

The recent spurt in cases of street crime has created an atmosphere of insecurity on the Capital’s roads. Though the police might absolve themselves of the responsibility for checking crimes such as domestic violence and enmity-driven murders taking the plea that there is less likelihood of them getting prior information, the argument will not hold true for offences like chain snatchings and robberies.

To begin with, there are certain flaws in the policing system that are being exploited by criminals. Many people feel that apart from the high-security or “high-priority” areas, police patrolling is not up to the desired intensity on the city roads, especially at night. It has also been noticed that policemen deployed at pickets rarely check the occupants of four-wheelers. The basic practice of questioning young men moving about in groups on the roads at odd hours or loitering about at market places is also rarely followed.

As for the sudden increase in cases of crime, many police officers suspect that new gangs of desperate first-timers who use firearms without any compunction have become active of late. Such gangs normally comprise illiterate, unemployed young men and school dropouts from the Capital and bordering cities. Almost all these gangs are linked to hardened criminals who train, motivate and instigate the first-timers to commit crime.

These criminals have easy access to country-made firearms that are available at cheap rates in nearby cities, mostly in western Uttar Pradesh.

“While it is easy to track down those with criminal records, as all necessary details about them are already available with us, it is relatively tough to identify and catch first-timers,” said a police officer, adding that most first-timers would start with chain snatching and several of them would graduate to become robbers.

It has also been found that some gangs have lately taken to the old method of using chilly powder as a weapon to incapacitate their targets before robbing them. The modus operandi was employed last month in at least two sensational robberies in South Delhi and East Delhi, both of which are yet to be solved. “This method was earlier used by some gangs from Mangolpuri and Inderpuri,” the police officer said.

To contain such crimes, the police will have to go back to the age-old tested formula of increasing presence, strengthening the local intelligence gathering network and conducting surprise checks to maintain pressure on criminal elements. Though technological up-gradation in the areas of communication, surveillance and scientific interrogation techniques have helped improve the quality of policing, its fundamentals are bound to remain the same. At the end of the day, it is the fear of khaki among criminals that keeps them at bay.

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