Need for joint action to curb snatchings in tricity

Nitin Jain

Snatchings continue to snatch headlines! Snatchers are on the prowl and are striking at will wherever they find an easy prey in the tricity. While the police authorities try to play down the issue and dismiss the strikes as “petty crime” and the handiwork of “petty criminals”, the residents, especially the fair sex and elders, continue to have a sense of insecurity. It is heightened by the fact that the bandits not only get active after dusk, but also strike in broad daylight, and that too, in the busiest of areas.

With the tricity divided into three different administrations– UT, Punjab and Haryana--lack of coordination and cooperation among Chandigarh, Mohali and Panchkula Police is giving the petty criminals free space, and a free run. Strike in Chandigarh and sneak into the adjoining Mohali or Panchkula and vice-versa is the modus operandi adopted by these criminals to escape the long arm of the law. More often than not, police officers in the three cities also attribute this as the main reason behind their failure to check the rise in street crime.

This should not make one jump to the conclusion that the police are completely helpless: snatchers are arrested and recoveries of snatched articles are also being made from time to time. But the most disturbing fact is their poor conviction rate, and the not-so-harsh punishment given to the few who are convicted. More often, the snatchers walk free for failure of the prosecution to prove the case before the court of law. And in the few cases where the prosecution succeeds, the convicts escape with not more than a couple of years behind the bars.

Those acquitted and the others coming out of jails after serving short sentences tend to turn hardcore, operate more professionally, and in a more organised manner. Inside the barracks, they often come across new acquaintances, serving jail terms for various other crimes, and tend to gang up to take to full-time crime post sentence. In the absence of any mechanism to deal with such criminals, the law enforcing agencies are left with little option but to track them with the help of the details they have about the “walked-free” and “out of jail” bandits. With the advancement in technology, it is time the tricity police bosses joined hands and put their intelligence inputs together to cleanse the tricity of petty crime.