Senior citizens are the soft targets in the national Capital. The murder of an octogenarian couple in South-East Delhi’s East of Kailash area on the wee hours of Friday is a grim reminder of the vulnerability of elderly. With this double murder, 12 senior citizens have been murdered in the city this year. As many as 46 senior citizens have allegedly been murdered in the past three years in Delhi, reveals records of the Delhi Police.
Manohar lal Madan (84), a retired bank official, and his wife Vimla (80), were murdered while they were asleep by suspected robbers who had broken into their house. Madans lived on the first floor of their house in East of Kailash.
According to the Delhi Police statistics, other cases of this year include the murder of a 68-year-old woman at her residence in Paharganj in August, the killing of 92-year-old man and his 62-year-old daughter-in-law at their bungalow in East Patel Nagar, and the murder of a 63-year-old man at his Vijay Vihar residence. All except the last case mentioned above were linked with robbery, said police.
National Crime Records Bureau data reveals that as many as 22 senior citizens were murdered in the Delhi Union Territory in 2014. The Delhi Police, however, took exception to the allegations that the national Capital was one of the most unsafe cities for senior citizens, saying that elderly people here have trust in police. “It is because the elderly ones, who are considered vulnerable targets for criminals, have trust on us, more and more of them are enrolling to the Delhi Police’s security scheme for senior citizens,” said Rajan Bhagat, Delhi Police spokesperson.
With 3,164 senior citizens enrolling themselves to the scheme this year, the total figure has gone up to 23,982, witnessing a 13.43 per cent increase from that in the previous year, Bhagat cited from the police records.
The security scheme for senior citizens require beat officials to keep a close eye on elderly people residing in areas under his/her jurisdiction and offering assistance whenever asked for, police said.
The senior citizen security scheme — which was launched around four years ago — largely came into focus after an incident reported last year, in which a 81-year-old woman journalist was allegedly murdered and then her body was burnt by a domestic help in South Delhi’s Greater Kailash area, police added.