Criminals have field day

SURPRISE has always been the key to success for criminals and the police. But invariably as records reveal, criminals have a higher rate of success. This was evident even in the recent Rs.nine lakh robbery at the Mambalam Railway Station Reservation office.

In the incident, a four-member gang struck with speed and terror, attacked railway staff with knives and escaped with the booty. Even a week after the heist, police are in the dark about the criminals behind the crime.

The robbery, which has shaken the security apparatus of the city and also sparked panic among residents as the culprits struck in the heart of the city, happened hardly 48 hours after the Police Commissioner, Mr. P. Kalimuthu, had assured that crime was under control.

Even as policing is rapidly changing and crime detection wings globally and even in other metros are adopting new strategies for tracing criminals, in Chennai most of the modernisation schemes and projects remain largely on paper. The police are yet to bring out a programme to get instant information about vehicles and criminals, despite Chennai boasting of IT capital status.

Though computer hardware has been installed for the city police and most of the senior police officials have computers, these are yet to be put into effective use. For instance, even elementary information on criminals and their associates are not available on the computers. There is no information whether a criminal is inside a prison or roaming scot-free.

It creates a negative impact on the force and is reflected on failure of the police in detecting major crimes. This is bound to embolden gangsters, as was evident in the Mambalam robbery.

Another agonising feature about the entire episode was the attitude of the local police in not registering a case immediately on the pretext of jurisdiction problem. In short, the incident revealed that criminals could have a free run in the city.

During this year, of the 518 property crimes the police have solved only 282 cases. A majority of the criminals involved in grave crimes continue to elude the police dragnet. During the last year, over 3,000 property crimes were reported but several violent crimes continue to remain unsolved.

Police are still in the dark about the culprits behind the murder and robbery of a housewife at Umayal Street in Kilpauk in November 1999. Even after more than seven years, the sensational multiple-murder case in which a four-member family was wiped out at Aminjikarai remains undetected.

The same holds good for the murder of an aged woman at Adyar, where the culprits choked her using a soap bar. The murder of two businessmen by car gangs in Periamet and Kodambakkam areas are just a few of the examples where the police investigation has failed.

Though police take cover showing high percentage of detection and recovery, a seasoned crime officer said that the usual trick adopted was to boost the value of solved crimes. For instance, the value of two-wheelers and four-wheelers which are recovered would be assessed by the market value for statistics. Similarly, though violent crimes remain unsolved, petty crime cases are compared on the same scale.

Even on Friday, a retired government official was assaulted by a two-member gang at G-Block in Anna Nagar. The assailants had followed him from the milk booth and attacked him with knives. They panicked when he screamed for help and fled the scene without taking any valuables. Police suspect that the same elusive gang which had targetted another aged person a couple of years ago in Adyar seem to be behind this incident.

The need of the hour is to prepare a comprehensive scheme for tackling crimes rather than comparing the crime statistics of other metros which had a higher crime rate than Chennai.

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Section  : Southern States
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