Common crime

The Joint Commissioner of Police (crime) R S Sharma has a way with words. A few months back this smooth and suave officer had made a string of grisly murders look just as bad and remote as the famine in Rwanda. “The killings are connected with inter-gang rivalries. Common man need not be bothered by them,” were his soothing words. They made People Like Us feel safe behind a buffer that separated us from them — unionist Datta Samant, mill owner Vallabh Thakkar, producer Mukesh Duggal and music baron Gulshan Kumar. No longer. A woman, who had just packed off her son to school, has been murdered at her V P Road residence along with her daughter. Two constables have been killed by Phanse Pardhis at Malad. An old woman has been killed at the upmarket Lokhandwala complex. A jewellery shop in Borivli has been looted of ornaments worth Rs 94 lakh. Two employees of the Bank of Baroda are robbed of Rs 25 lakh at Bandra and a jewellery exporter of Rs 40 lakh at Gamdevi. All this in a spate of four months. None ofthem were even remotely connected to the underworld, done anything that could rub Mr Dawood Ibrahim the wrong way or antagonise Chhota Rajan. They were certainly not one of them. It can be said with a certain amount of confidence that the BoB employees never counted in petis the money they were carrying. The buffer, Mr Sharma, has been pulled away. Common man is being targeted. In last four months 98 robberies have been reported, while only 49 were registered in the entire last year. This year there already have been 552 cases of house-break-ins. What now? It would help if the police treated crime as crime without any attempt at categorising it. Such classification may come handy for the department at press conferences, but let’s not harbour any illusions – criminals don’t follow our rules. And those who don’t, need to be stopped. Any kind of criminal activity must be stamped out without waiting for it to reach a V P Road flat or a Malad colony.