Ritesh: "I am traumatised and my whole life is affected ... I am scared of the dark now." Credit:Justin McManus He locked his wife and two young children in the bathroom and pleaded with the burglars not to harm his family. While one of the teens threatened him with a shovel, the others – he said some were as young as 15 – ransacked his home, stealing the keys to his Nissan Pulsar, the family's jewellery and electrical equipment. "I was thinking they were going to kill me because they weren't wearing any masks or gloves, and were walking around like it was their house," he said. The ordeal lasted 45 minutes, and he said the home invaders were pushing him around the entire time, as if goading him to retaliate.

The only mercy the thieves showed was leaving behind one of the family's two cars. He said the group were caught after a chase with police and the Nissan was recovered (he no longer wants it as it reminds him of that night), but the offenders were later released on bail by a magistrate. "They are now out walking freely. But I am traumatised and my whole life is affected," Mr Chandan said. "I'm scared of the dark now. I have never been scared of anything before. I am locking myself and my family in our bedroom at night so we don't have to go outside. It's like I am under house arrest in my own house." But he said the local community in Williams Landing had been supportive of him following the home invasion.

Mr Chandan's experience is not an isolated one. On Wednesday last week homes were broken into, residents were threatened and cars were stolen in Airport West and Essendon. On Friday last week, a car stolen from Truganina carrying nine people crashed on the West Gate Freeway. And on Tuesday this week, two cars were stolen from a Point Cook home in the early hours of the morning. Sick of crime in the area, a group of Wyndham locals are staging a protest in Werribee on Saturday, calling for more police officers to be stationed in the region. A spokesman for the protesters, Safwat Ali, said police numbers had not kept apace with population growth in the Wyndham area. "We want to make the government and authorities aware that we need more police," he said. Analysis in The Age two years ago found Williams Landing was one of the state's most burgled suburbs, with the equivalent of one in every 30 homes in the postcode hit by thieves in 2013/14.

But the situation appears to have worsened since then, with the number of break-ins or burglaries in this postcode reaching a five-year high of 88 in the 12 months to the end of March this year. The number of burglaries throughout the state also reached a five-year high over the past 12 months, with more than 51,000 – about 140 a day – showing up in Crime Statistics agency figures. This data includes aggravated and non-aggravated burglaries. Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Steve Fontana said in a statement that the majority of burglaries were non-violent. But he said police were focused on the spate of aggravated burglaries and carjackings and assured Victorians they would get on top of the problem.

In many postcodes around Geelong, Bendigo, Ballarat and Melbourne's south-east, burglaries spiked to five-year record levels last year. Red areas on the map below recorded five-year highs in burglaries last year. Orange areas had no available data. This map shows the burglary rate in Victorian postcodes. The darker areas of the map correspond to areas with higher burglary rates. However, the most recent available population data for postcodes was released in 2011, so the burglary rates for areas that have undergone massive population growth since then may be overstated in this map.

Click an area to view the number of burglaries or break ins recorded there over the past five years.