Police have advised educational institutions in the city and suburbs to maintain a database of students residing outside college hostels. This comes in the wake of the recent arrest of a private engineering college student hailing from Bihar, who was found in possession of a country-made gun and bullets.
Speaking to reporters on Saturday evening, Commissioner of Police J.K. Tripathy termed the case a ‘stray incident' but at the same time urged all educational institutions to remain vigilant and collect records of students residing off-campus.
“We appeal to the institutions to have a database with at least minimum information on every student so that in the event of police requiring this information for verification, the procedure of sharing could be simplified,” Mr. Tripathy added.
The Commissioner also expressed satisfaction over the number of tenant information forms received so far in all four police zones. “There has been an overwhelming response from landlords and tenants and we have received close to 22,000 completed forms to date . We expect further cooperation from others as well,” said Mr. Tripathy.
As the enumeration process through the tenant information forms is in the works, the data on student tenants would eventually be available to the police. Therefore the need to conduct a door-to-door enumeration of students residing outside college hostels did not arise, he said.
Police personnel are also coordinating with managements of many colleges including engineering institutions on Old Mahabalipuram Road to gather data on students residing in rented accommodations outside their campus, police sources told The Hindu . Earlier on Saturday afternoon, Mr. Tripathy inspected valuables worth Rs. 2.18 crore recovered in 205 cases, which include 99 cases of chain snatching registered and investigated by city police in the last two months.
A total of 143 persons were arrested and 880 sovereigns of gold, 1,500 grams of silver items and Rs. 6.30 lakh in cash were seized. The recovered items including jewellery, electronic goods, two-wheelers, autorickshaws and cars were handed over to the rightful owners.
