The Steel City is fast transforming into ‘crime city’ with one or other shoot out incident or loot and snatching taking place every alternate day on an average. All the claims of the police department have failed to impress upon the denizens who have been witnessing daylight criminal incidents at regular intervals for the past few weeks.
Concerned over the situation, the police have started random checking of bikes, beefing up security in and outside the bank premises, centralising the patrol vehicles to police control room and keeping vigil at checking points at the exit points in the city.
Police carried out a special drive of checking the riders at Bistupur, near G-Town Club turning. At Sakchi the special drive was conducted throughout on Masjid Road and in Golmuri the two-hour-long drive was carried out near the Golmri roundabout. The special drive was also carried out in Kadma, Telco, Jugsalai and Mango where the incidents of snatching was reported regularly.
The actions are being taken by superintendent of police (city) Prashant Anand at the directions of senior SP, Anoop T Mathew following a meeting of senior police officers on Tuesday night after two bike-borne criminals snatched away Rs 6 lakh from a woman near the State Bank of India's main branch in Bistupur and also police station.
Notably, the snatching of Rs 6 lakh was the fourth major case of loot and snatching involving over Rs 30 lakh taken place in the Bistupur police station area during the past seven months. But the police have failed to detect any of these cases.
Apart from the incident of loot and snatching of cashes, over 50 incidents of cell-phone and chain snatching and also bike-lifting have been reported from the Bistupur area during this period.
In the wake of sudden surge observed in the snatching cases, especially amongst the women, residents of the city are perturbed over the issue from the past few weeks.
According to police sources, most of the youths involved in the incidents of chain or purse snatching are drug addicts. They adopt different types of modus operandi -- either a youth snatches the purse or a chain in lonely places, or engages the victim in a conversation and commit the crime.
SP (City) Anand said that though they have not got any clue to the incident of snatching of Rs 6 lakh in Bistupur, they are taking such measures which will bring down the level of snatching, loot and bike lifting shortly.
The SP (City) said they have also decided to review the effectiveness of the CCTV cameras installed inside and outside the banks so that the police may get a clear footage of the suspected criminals involved behind any incident of crime.
" We are concerned over the situation and are taking steps. We have also convened a meeting of the bank managers to isolate the cash counters from other departments in a bank so that the criminals may not get an idea which customers are withdrawing which amount of money," Anand informed.