Chennai :

From thieves breaking open the rear door of the house of a senior citizen who had gone to visit her son for an overnight stay in the same neighbourhood, to robbers boarding a train, snatching jewellery at knifepoint and melting away in the dark, to a burglar snatching away valuables from a house where the inmates went to sleep, leaving a door open for ventilation to combat the summer heat - the list of crime is indeed a long one.





The incident at late Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa’s Kodanadu estate, where a watchman was murdered on Monday, is a different genre of crime. As was the arson at her Siruseri bungalow a few days ago. The former appears to be a planned invasion, the purpose of which is still unclear. What is easy to read is that robbers and burglars are targeting middle class families. We used to label them as summertime crimes.





Typically, these occur due to the arrival of gangs from the northern belt. These upcountry thieves come with an agenda of serial thefts. They come in a rush, rob and quickly off to other areas. They target individual homes and locked doors. Leaving any door or window open and unguarded is an invitation to these men to execute a quick robbery and escape. They move progressively to other cities and tier 2 and tier 3 cities like Vellore.





These gangs also target jewellery shops, high-end watch showrooms and shops where they can lay hands on a huge amount of cash. The jewellery shops are an easy target, since most of them have a shutter. Usually, one of the gang members would be a small, skinny man who can easily lift, roll under a shutter, squeeze through tiny opening, enter the shop and open it for others to enter and burgle.





The robberies on trains too are usually committed by people from Bihar and other states. Earlier, we used to have the biscuit bandits from other states, who targeted unsuspecting fellow travellers.





All these crimes can be contained only with vigilant patrolling. Instead of focusing on law and order, police seem to be checking for drunken driving and RC book and driving license verification. This is a waste of time. The superior officers may not be aware of what is going on in the field. Recently, a member of my constituency complained about such behaviour of traffic cops and said, “Would these cops behave like this if Jayalalithaa had been alive?”





This is a wake-up call for our police. They should come out of their hibernation and work with the passion they all possessed, when they entered the profession.





— The writer is Mylapore MLA and former DGP