Spurt in Twin City crimes in 2013; but detection, recovery go up too

Reported by Santosh Jagdev

Bhubaneswar, Jan 29:

Despite a series of laudable initiatives like police-public interaction and stricter patrolling, crimes like robbery, burglary, theft, dacoity, swindling, rape, dowry torture and murder in the Cuttack-Bhubaneswar Commissionerate area have gone up this year in comparison with last year. This was revealed by the Annual Crime Report-2013 submitted by the Commissionerate Police on Tuesday.

Commissionerate police, however, attributes the spurt in serious crimes in the Twin City to greater reporting of cases. Detection and recovery rates have also increased in comparison to the last year, it points out.

According to the report, a total of 9109 cases were reported in 2013 against 8145 in 2012 while the detection rate has increased to 7212 last year as compared to 6679 cases in 2012.

A total of burglary 507 cases were reported last year, against 432 in 2012. Simultaneously, recovery of stolen goods has also gone up from 27 percent in 2012 to 41 percent in 2013. As for ordinary theft cases, 2378 of them were reported in 2013, while it was only 1952 in 2012. But the Twin City police managed to crack 45% of such cases, marking a major improvement in the detection rate.

In cases of robbery too, which went up marginally from 142 in 2012 to 143 in 2013, the recovery percentage of stolen goods has to 77 in 2013 as against 50 in 2012.

The murder of Kalingaputra Real Estate and Developers managing director Krushna Chandra Nayak, city businessman’s wife Bachansudha Pattanayak and the Ushashree Parida murder case were the major crimes reported in the city last year. However, police have arrested all the accused in these case and have filed charge sheet in two of them.

There was only a marginal increase in murder cases from 82 in 2012 to 83 in 2013. But the detection rate too has gone up by 1% to touch 99 percent compared to 2012. \

Though the number of rape cases was lower at 81 in 2013 as against 84 in 2012, the detection rate too was lower at 80 against 84 in 2012.

According to police officials, dowry related cases were fewer last year with 329 in 2013 against 439 reported in 2012.

But there has been a massive spurt in swindling cases from 250 in 2012 to 381 in 2013, possibly due to the registration of a large number of cases by investors duped by chit fund companies. But the detection percentage too has improve going up to 94 in 2013 against 87 in 2012. There were 102 rioting cases last year against 96 in 2012.

Due to initiatives taken by the traffic police like the  drive to detect traffic violators like triple riding, helmet checking, rash and negligent driving, illegal parking, drunken driving and wrong side driving, around 1, 51, 078 violators were fined last year as against 1, 25, 653 in 2012, the report said.

Twin City Commissioner Dr R P Sharma said, “We have taken several initiatives like revamping the night patrolling system and concentrating on open drinking and drunken driving, strengthening the PCRs by deploying extra manpower and weapons to check the rise in crimes. Due to these initiatives, detection rate have decreased a lot in comparison to the previous year.

“To stop crimes related to burglary, theft, robbery, dacoity, we are arranging police-public interactions under various police station jurisdictions from time to time to make the people aware to stay safe. We are also arranging regular meetings with various stake holders like jewellers, school authoriiesy, private security agencies, shopping mall owners and hotel associations in order to check related crimes,” said the Commissioner.

To stop atrocities against women like dowry torture in TwinC, we have planned to place a psychologist desk at Mahila police stations to impart counselling to husbands and wives. Besides, a three-tier night patrolling management will soon be carries out by the department connecting the DCP office, all police stations and Modern police control room to get information quickly and start fighting related crimes,” Dr Sharma said.