Not much ado about rising crime in UP

Chief Minister Rajnath Singh expressed serious concern over the worsening state of affairs in his maiden press conference, accorded top priority to improvement of law and order situation and asked field officers to apply for transfers if they were unfit to deliver the goods.

Rajnath Singh experienced the worsening law and order situation in the state in the killing of BJP MLA from Saharanpur Nirbhay Pal Sharma immediately after his taking over the hot seat. The incident jolted the Rajnath Singh government and it had to suspend senior superintendent of police Mukul Goyal to subside the political outcry.

Earlier, the superintendent of police of Hardoi district was placed on suspension when BJP MLA Ganga Singh Chauhan and his family members were attacked. Though the MLA suffered serious injuries, his wife died on the spot.

Besides a bomb explosion in the Sabarmati Express train in the Faizabad district, the blasts in Lucknow, Kanpur and Agra posed a new kind of problem for the Uttar Pradesh police.

Their are many examples of disorder as Mubarakpur riots in the Azamgarh district erupted immediately after claiming at least eleven lives and curfew restrictions were imposed for about a week.

Moreover, there was no let-up in the communal tension as incidents of communal disturbance occurred one after another in Mau, Moradabad, Inhauna (Rae Bareli) and Sultanpur.

The Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI)-linked incidents in the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) and related stand-off between the administration and the AMU authorities over the issue of closure of the univeristy found headlines in newspapers of the country for a number of days.

At the fag end of the year, the killing of Allahabad journalist Dhirendra Singh rocked the media. However, the state police claimed to have arrested the main culprit.

Though the percentage of crimes rose in the state, police had a reason to pat themselves on the back when they claimed to have kept under check the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) activities, besides nabbing four members of the Abu Salem gang.

The Uttar Pradesh police also killed two wanted dacoits–Lala Ramand Sahbeera alias Shyam Singh Yadav–last year.

But the state police remained handicapped in the absence of sophisticated weapons and adequate number of security personnel. The engagement of a large number of policemen as “shadow and gunner” for politicians and others kept creating problems for police to deal with the general law and order situation in districts.

However, the government is showing its commitment to withdraw “shadow and gunner” from the so-called VVIPS and VIPs.

Figures available with the police headquarters here says that till November, 2000, there was a rise of 6.29 per cent in dacoity, 2.85 in loot, 11.81 in riots, 17.99 per cent in the incidents of kidnapping for ransom, 8.08 per cent in dowry deaths and alarmingly 23.14 per cent in the incidents of rape.

Police record, howover, points out that there was one per cent decline in murders and ten per cent in the road loots.

Though the percentage of crimes rose in the state, police had areason to pat themselves on the back when they claimed to have kept under check the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) activities, besides nabbing four members of the Abu Salem gang.