With Odisha making itself counted among the top-10 violent States in the country in 2015, the heat was directly on the State cops as more than three-dozen policemen were injured by retaliations from criminals, not Maoists, last year.
Sample this: When mere two cops were inflicted with injuries while in action against Maoists, a high of 34 were injured while engaging on with the criminals. Interesting enough here is, the State police had launched a massive operation against land and tender mafia last year.
However, the earlier trend till 2014 was that the State cops borne the maximum injuries either during anti-dacoity operations or during crowd control operations in situations like riots. Significantly, riots and arsons clocked a rise of 14 per cent in 2015. Interestingly, cops were on toes in the entire coastal stretch from Kendrapada to Khurda district last year with people going berserk when the pot of fake babas melted out quite vigorously. Still, the police recorded a mere one injury last year, shows the National Crime Records Bureau’s (NCRB) report.
What looks to be the big takeaway for Odisha from the NCRB’s Crime in India 2015 report released recently is the society has not only gone more ‘riotous’ last year but grown ‘murderous’ too as cases of murder and cases of attempt to murder have posted a sharp rise. When gang or personal rivalries mostly manifested in murders last year in the State, what, however, looks more striking is the stark manifestation of ‘honour killings’ in Odisha as a whopping 86 murders last year in the State were attributed to love affairs, which for the first time had eclipsed cases of murder for property in the State.
More worrying is, even, State finds itself perched on the 6th slot nationally in cases of ‘honour killings’ last year only to join the ranks with States like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu where the caste cauldron is quite virulent.
The result: Odisha recorded around 5 per cent rise in violent crimes in 2015 and cornered a share of 4.4 per cent of the violent crime cases nationally against 4.2 per cent in 2014. Significant here is the share of Odisha’s population in the country is below 4 per cent.
Though the State has held on to its 9th ‘violent State’ tag in the country in 2015, it moved on to become the second State in the country after Assam in the rate of violent crimes. Odisha with a violent crime rate (incidence of violent crimes per lakh population) of 34.7 in 2015 is at par with Bihar.
Moreover, Odisha still is the number 3 State in the country with most dacoity cases. And, it is only behind Bihar as far as the dacoity cases in BIMARU (Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) States are concerned. Significantly, a World Bank report way back in 2009 had outlined dacoity and robbery on highways/roads and commercial establishments in Odisha a red rag to private investment inflow.