Once a burglary victim, always a victim

As per the Right to Information reply sought by us, the detection percentage of burglaries reported in the city and suburbs in the last six years, except in 2008, is well below 35 per cent. Besides, statistics reveal that a burglary victim remains a victim, with less than 20 per cent of the overall stolen amount being recovered.

Between 2005 and February 2011, a total at Rs 185.86 crore has been lost to burglaries, with nearly Rs 30 crore being lost annually. In fact, in the first two months of 2011, Mumbaikars have already lost over Rs 6 crore to burglars, who seem to be consistently targetting the Western Mumbai, followed by the Central, Eastern and finally the North Mumbai regions.

While the number of minors involved in burglaries also remains consistent in these six years, with over 100- 115 of them being arrested every year, the maximum offenders arrested are youth (their number being 7099) between 18 and 30 years. They are followed by youth between 30 and 45 years, whose arrests totalled 1967 in the six years between 2005-11.

Whilst a senior police official claimed there are many repeated offenders among those arrested, the RTI application revealed that the Mumbai Police Commissioner's office has no information about them. Further, figures reveal an interesting trend, showing fewer cases registered while the booty being stolen getting larger by the day. This implies the burglars are targetting fewer houses, but the ones from where larger sums can be stolen.

The Mumbai Police for patrolling purpose has divided Mumbai city and suburbs into five regions viz. Eastern, Western, Northern, Southern and Central. Statistics show that while the Western region has been the worst hit, the Central regions remain the epicentre for burglaries. Further, poor detection rate plagues Vakola, Vile Parle, Bandra, Santacruz, Versova, Nirmal Nagar, DN Nagar, Oshiwara, Khar, Powai, Sakinaka, Andheri and the MIDC areas in western suburbs, with Amboli rising in prominence in the last three years.

This steep rise (a rise of Rs 10 crore from 2009 to 2010) in the ‘ reported’ unrecoverable amount of burglaries is despite the fact that Mumbai is patrolled by 84 police stations, which are divided into 38 divisions monitored by 38 ACP (IPS officer).

When we took the above report to Joint Commissioner of Police of Mumbai (Law and Order) Rajnish Seth, he directed us to Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Operations, Rajkumar Vatkar. “ If you compare the number of cases to the city’s population of around 1.6 crore, you will see we are trying our best,” Vatkar said.

Another senior official said on condition of anonymity, “ Of the nearly 16,000, only 25 per cent cops are on night duty when these incidents take place.” Advocating a stringent law to deal with the " fearless and ruthless" burglars, another official said, " It is often the case that repeat offenders get bail within a few days. The bigger the stolen booty, lesser the time taken to bribe a lawyer and come out on bail. Later, 90 per cent of them get acquitted due to lack of evidence and continue the chain.