Crime and negligence

When North Block talks, the Delhi Police listens. So it was when the newly-appointed Home Secretary Kamal Pandey summoned the city8217;s top cops and took them to task for the deteriorating law and order situation in the Capital. The unscheduled meeting that lasted for half-hour is reported to have been attended by the entire top brass of the Delhi Police, including five joint commissioners, with the singular exception of the Commissioner of Police V. N. Singh. This should give observers something to mull over. The suddenness of the meeting, the absence of V. N. Singh, and the very fact that North Block decided to directly intervene in city affairs, instead of going through the Lieutenant Governor as usual, is enough fodder for conjecture. None of it, however, can conceal the ineptitude of the Delhi Police in the face of growing crime. And nothing can absolve the Union Home Ministry of doing too little, too late. Worse, it is impossible to shrug off the realisation that the Home Ministry is responding to the callof the impending general elections rather than the silent pleas of the panic-stricken Delhiites.

Only last week, C. B. Rana, a bank security guard, was gunned down and robbed of Rs two lakh in Bhikaji Cama Place, while he and two other employees were taking the money to the bank8217;s extension counter about 300 yards away. On the same day, Manohar Lal Arora and his grandson Rajat were looted of Rs 10 lakh near Taj Enclave while they were returning after withdrawing the money from Vijay Bank in Khureji. Meanwhile, in a self-congratulatory drive, the Delhi Police is understood to have rounded up 3,000 persons, including potential criminals, suspects, bullies, robbers and auto-thieves who have been operating in different parts of the city. The move has ostensibly come in the wake of the bomb explosion that rocked Chandni Chowk and fresh evidence that has established the revival of Punjab militant activities in the city.

You don8217;t need to exert your memory to recall that there have been equally grave instances, if not more, over the past few months to push the Delhi Police into concerted action and the Home Ministry into serious contemplation. Yet, all that the spate of murders in the city prompted from the Delhi Police was an admission of its own limitations. More memorably, perhaps for the first time, the police told the hapless citizens that they could no longer depend on the police for their security.

Even now, the police officials are said to have stated in their defence that the figures do not particularly point to a spiral in crime, as they correspond to that of the last year. It is a measure of the seriousness with which the Home Ministry is viewing the worsening situation that it has rejected the claims of the Delhi Police by saying that figures do not necessarily reveal the real picture. That8217;s what this meeting has done about the spiralling crime. Now, it8217;s official.