Worsening crime rate rattles Chennai

Further, in spite of their undertaking extreme measures like encounter killings to eliminate gangsters, there have been 18 murders in June alone, which show Chennai police in a bad light.

A murder that was widely covered by the media was that of MGR’s kin ‘MGR’ Vijayan. The case has since been transferred to Crime Branch CID, though no headway has been made as yet.

A 65-year-old man was kicked to death by his daughter and her husband. The couple, Kalai Selvi and Jagannathan, was not willing to share property worth Rs 2 crore with her sisters. Another couple was caught for two murders, including one of a housewife. In another instance, two sons-in-law were arrested for killing their mother-in-law after she objected to their desire to remarry.

This is not all. The state-owned liquor retail shops, TASMAC, witnessed four murders in May and June, including that of an employee who was killed after a fight over the quality of liquor.

There have also been murders due to rivalry between organisations. A gang killed the president of a drivers’ union on May 31. Two days later, Thirunavukkarasu, a rowdy, was hacked to death by a gang of four. In the next three weeks, there was a murder every week — a rowdy done in by his rivals in the suburb, a thief killed, and another rowdy killed at a liquor shop.

On July 3, 35-year-old Suresh Kumar was stabbed 13 times by a gang at a bus stop. Though it was night, there were people at the bus stop and the local police station was quite nearby. However, these did not prevent the gang from killing him on the spot. The strings were allegedly pulled by a woman peddler, at present in prison, who believed that Suresh was involved in her son’s murder. The murder was committed on the fifth anniversary of her son’s death.

The Dinakaran daily recently reported that there have been 23 murders in the recent past. The police commissioner clarified that there were only 18. Politicians, meanwhile, are indulging in blame game. After parting ways with the DMK, the PMK had alleged that the state police had let a gangster go scot-free after the intervention of a senior minister. Though the police did not deny nabbing him, they said they had to let him go as there was nothing to charge him with.

City police officials said that murders due to family problems or personal animosity cannot be prevented, but admitted, on condition of anonymity, that murder by gangs put them in a bad light. “We are checking the list of cases to identify if there are any cases pending against some rowdy,” said Police Commissioner R Sekar. The police were able to nab the accused in all other cases except in the MGR kin’s case.

The police are also preparing a list of murders in the past decade. Sekar asserted that the police would be tough on rowdies; one was killed in an encounter on last Sunday, when he resisted the police team’s efforts to arrest him.

“To prevent rowdies and gangs from gaining strength, we are taking preventive measures like rounding up the criminals during night,” he added.