NEW DELHI, JUNE 15: For the first time in recent years, senior Delhi police officials have come out in the open with their ``anxiety about the increase in the number of robberies in the city''.Police Commissioner VN Singh was the first to tell the media earlier this month that he was worried about robberies, especially those committed inside houses.Singh, however, pointed out that a plan had been drawn up to check the spurt in such incidents.The newly-appointed Joint Commissioner of Police (Southern Range) Amod Kanth toed a similar line while speaking on issue.Kanth, who returned to Delhi Police after eight years, said: ``We are alarmed about the rise in robberies, but we are also working towards better policing.''All SHOs have been asked to register robbery cases without taking into account the amount of money involved. ``Unless cases are registered freely, prompt action cannot be taken. It also helps to build up information on criminals,'' said Kanth.``We need to establish crime recordbureaus in the districts. The Crime Branch has narrowed down the number of desperate criminals in Delhi to 160 and efforts are on to nab them. But we are now focussing our attention on novices because they were behind most of the recent robberies.''He said that 229 cases of robbery had been registered till May 31, and around 58 per cent of these had been solved. The figures, however, were much lower than other metropolitan cities in the world like London where 2,300 cases had been registered during the same period.
