Vijayawada: Lack of jobs for engineering graduates and other professionals is adding to the number of crimes, particularly in offences like robbery.
This is evident by the robbery and cheating cases cracked by police in the city recently.
On Monday, the Machavaram police arrested a five-member gang led by an unemployed MBA graduate. The other members of the gang were also unemployed BA and BSc graduates.
The prime accused, Rudrapati David Turman Babu, 28, came up with the idea of cheating people by promising them cheap gold. He roped in his friends Koraku Veera Venkata Manindra Kumar 25, Yerramsetti Gopinatha 24, Ponugumati Srikanth, 29, and Neppali Siva Kishore, 29.
The gang lured people by promising to sell gold imported from Dubai and other foreign countries at cheap rates. While three gang members would collect the money from the victim, two others, dressed in khaki and posing as police officials, would enter the scene after which the victim as well as the gang members would run away, said central zone ACP K. Lavanya Lakshmi.
Following a complaint by a victim, G. Srikanth, Machavaram police arrested the gang on Monday.
Mr Srikanth was robbed of Rs 12,000 and given chocolates covered with gold foil, which were packed in a box along with some stones after the pseudo cops arrived at the scene.
Speaking to this newspaper about the increasing number of robberies, Ms Lakshmi said that unemployed youth and students were getting used to easy money and were indulging themselves in such activities.
“An engineering student, who was an accused in a motorcycle lifting case, said that he was inspired by his seniors who snatched chains and had ‘settled’ in life. Students and graduates seem to be drawing inspiration from these wrong activities to earn easy money when needed,” she said.
In similar cases, unemployed graduates have been arrested in various police stations of Vijayawada, mostly for chain snatching.
“However, not all unemployed youths will automatically engage in these activities unless they are influenced by miscreants,” said B. Sudheer a professor in an engineering college.
