DIP IN CHAIN-SNATCHING CASES? THANK CONGESTION DUE TO METRO WORK

The road traffic in Mumbai is facing direct brunt of ongoing construction work of Metro but it has positive impact in bringing down the chain snatching cases in the city as the snatchers cannot make a clean getaway with the valuables due to traffic snarls and they were often caught red-handed.

Besides heavy traffic, the strategic patrolling of police and deployment of increased law enforcement agencies at vulnerable places too have helped in remarkable reduction of chain snatching cases in six divisions including Goregaon, Malwani, Borivali, Dindoshi, Samtanagar and Dahisar of north region of Mumbai police.

The Additional Commissioner of Police (North Region), Rajesh Pradhan, told the Free Press Journal there is remarkable reduction of nearly 70 percent cases of chain snatching in the last one year.

“Last year till October, we had registered total 126 chain snatching cases were registered in north region police stations. The data for corresponding period this year is only 38 due to strategic patrolling at vulnerable places,” Pradhan said.

The police teams have been patrolling in the areas where people, specially senior citizens, go for jogging. The patrolling teams have been instructed not to stand at one place but to continuously keep moving at vulnerable places.

“We have made dossier of habitual chain snatchers in the city. Most of them come from adjacent areas of Palghar, Thane and eastern suburb. The dossier helped us detecting the chain snatching cases. Besides this, the electronic surveillance cameras installed at various important junctions helped us tracing the accused. The increase in detection rate, too, helped us curbing chain snatching cases,” said another senior officer of North Region.

The Maharashtra Housing Board (MHB) police station registered only one case of chain snatching this year. The corresponding figures for 2015 and 2016 were 26 and 7 respectively.