Snatching cases surge in the national capital
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New Delhi: Number of snatching cases mounts in the national capital region, reports IANS, and warns of "prowling snatchers" if one is planning to go for a walk here.
In February, a 40-year-old woman got snatched off her handbag while getting out of an autorickshaw in the Shahdara district. She was about to attend a marriage, while snatchers, speeding on a bike acted, throwing her out of the rickshaw. The woman sustained many injuries and was put on the ventilator.
In southeast Delhi, in Lajpat Nagar, two people were snatched from a bag containing Rs 38 lakhs. The snatchers stopped the auto-rickshaw victims from travelling and threw chilly powder at them to seize the money bag.
In March, Rajya Sabha MP Vijay Goel's mobile phone was snatched while he was travelling in a car in north Delhi. The police seemed well prepared this time because they tracked the snatcher and recovered the phone within four hours. But the fact that even people's representatives are not immune to this remains.
Though police end up capturing the culprits in most of the cases, stopping such crimes entirely does not seem to happen. A rise in such incidents in the capital region is also a fact.
IANS reports that the police are also actively pursuing all the cases of snatching, and this year, the solving rate has increased due to the multi-pronged strategies adopted by DCPs of all districts.
Last year a significant structural transformation that was implemented was the consolidation through a merger of PCR manpower and logistics with police stations. PCR vehicles and manpower, which earlier acted as centrally operated mobile emergency response teams with limited policing roles, were decentralised and merged with police stations.
It led to a substantial increase in human resource availability at police stations, resulting in faster response to distress calls.
Apart from this, the police are countering the menace of snatching by increased night patrolling in vulnerable areas and the installation of high-tech CCTV cameras. The police also say that they regularly identify the hotspots of snatching and accordingly deploy resources.
