Four consecutive incidents of burglary took place in this city including one at Vijaya Vihar under the Sadar police station within a span of a few weeks causing panic among denizens.
Taking advantage of absence of any family member, a gang of unidentified dacoits entered into the house of an engineer of BSNl, Sudarsan Panigrahi, and looted properties worth lakhs of rupees last week. Earlier to this, dacoits had broken the grills and locks of the house of Parsuram Sahu and Harihara Rao of the same locality and decamped unnoticed with valuables worth lakhs of rupees which include gold ornaments, cash and household articles.
Senior citizens attribute the repeated incidents of burglary, looting, hooliganism, eve-teasing and chain-snatching in the city to the lack of effective and timely police patrolling. Instead of police patrolling in dead night when people are asleep, the patrolling is done only in the evening hours when people are alert. Such police patrolling becomes redundant and meaningless, observed a senior citizen.
It may be recalled that in recent past several such lootings have taken place in the city even in daytime posing an open challenge to the police.
In another incident, a group of unidentified burglars broke the locks of the Dance Academy in the one-way traffic road at Dalua Street on Sunday and stole a computer, a digital camera and cash in a midnight operation. After the Dance Academy manger lodged an FIR in the Town police station on Monday, a scientific team of the police and a dog were pressed into service at the spot for investigation.
Prior to this incident, a group of dacoits had looted valuables worth lakhs of rupees from the house of Arun Behera of lakshmi Nagar in the lanjipalli area on May 15. They stole gold ornaments, cash, utensils and several valuable household articles. After an FIR was lodged by Behera, the police started investigation. In this incident, the police arrested two minors, but no stolen properties are yet to be recovered from them, sources said.
More than the crime, the attitude of some police officers is a matter of shock to the denizens as evident from the fact that when a victim, a senior citizen, went to a police station to lodge a complaint for theft, instead of showing sympathy to him, the police officer on duty advised him, “Don’t leave the town keeping the house locked as it is not the Rama Rajya where there can be no crime.”
With the ascending incidents of looting, burglary, chain-snatching being the order of the day for the denizens of Brahmapur, the Government and the police administration seem to be helpless and remain mute spectators, adding salt to the injury of the victims. According to some senior citizens, the magnitude of looting and chain-snatching, as currently being encountered by the denizens of the city, had never happened during their lifetime.