Delhi’s crime conundrum: Heinous crimes surge, but street crime sees a decline

New Delhi, July 25 : Over the past six months, Delhi has been grappling with a disturbing surge in heinous crimes, such as murder, rape, and dacoities.

Additionally, there has been a concerning rise in thefts, particularly carried out by interstate gangs, targeting vehicles, mobile phones, and cars within the city.

However, despite the recent spike in incidents involving snatching and armed robbery, there is a silver lining in the overall street crime scenario, as reported by the police.

There are still numerous unresolved cases of snatching, with almost half of the registered incidents yet to be solved, and the clearance rate for theft cases is even more disheartening, with less than a quarter of them having been successfully resolved.

According to the latest data from January to June, Delhi experienced a slight increase in murders, rising from 256 to 266, as compared to last year.However, there was a significant decrease in robbery cases, dropping by a third, from 1,161 to 779.

Remarkably, over 95 per cent of the robbery cases were successfully solved, leading to more than 1,500 arrests.On the other hand, dacoity cases are only reduced by one, going from 8 to 7.However, the clearance rate for dacoity cases declined to 77 per cent compared to the previous years 100 per cent clearance rate.

The police reported a noticeable rise in theft incidents, including motor vehicle theft, ranging from 20 to 40 per cent more compared to the previous year.

However, arrests were made in only 16 to 20 per cent of these theft cases.As per data, till June this year 19,277 cases of vehicle theft were reported, out of these only 3,203 were solved and 2,347 were arrested.

In 2022 till June, 11,157 MV theft cases were registered, while 3,357 were solved and 2,510 criminals were arrested.

In terms of crimes against women, the number of registered rape cases increased from 995 to 1,029 compared to the same period last year, with arrests made in over 93 per cent of these cases.

There was a slight dip in other crimes against women, such as sexual harassment, molestation, stalking, and assaults, decreasing from 4,201 to 3,920.

However, arrests were made in a little over half of these cases.

Meanwhile, the police emphasised that despite the headlines highlighting heinous crimes, street crime has actually decreased.

Specifically, snatching incidents saw a decline from 4,687 in 2022 to 3,814, representing a drop of 19 per cent.

Over 2,500 arrests were made in snatching cases.

The police said that the increase in the number of heinous crimes was minimal and attributed the rise in statistics to improved reporting due to the quick and efficient response of the police force to such complaints.

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