Vijayawada: Causing much concern to the public and the police, Vijayawada is witnessing an increase in crime rates. As per NCRB, 7,876 cognizable crimes were registered in the city in 2014. The city topped Telugu speaking cities and was also above many cities in South India when it came to crimes.
After Kochi, Kollam and Tiruvanantapur, Vijayawada finds place in the chart with cognizable crimes at 528.2 while the country’s average is 383.7. Ironically, Vijayawada beats Hyderabad whose crime rate is 244.4, while Vizag’s crime rate is 446.7.
The report says that thefts, crimes against women and road rages comprise most of the crimes in the city. “Crimes cannot be stopped, but they can be prevented and avoided. It is not just the responsibility of the police but a collective responsibility of society to bring reforms to pull down crime rate, be it traffic issues, crime against women or anything,” said human rights activist M. Seshagiri Rao.
He said that motivation was needed and it should start from homes. “Unless there is a traffic police at a junction, no one follows the rules. This attitude should be changed first,” he added.
AP, TS pile up heap of pending cases:
Despite the state’s division and introduction of measures to improve policing, the cops haven’t been able to bring down the number of cases pending investigation. While the TS police has over 44,000 cases pending from 2014, there are more than 54,000 in AP. The total number of cases in a year reported in each state is less than 1.2 lakh, according to NCRB data. By the end of 2014, 1,14,604 cases were reported in AP, and 1,06,830 cases were reported in TS.
Along with these cases, the Telangana police had as many as 44,866 cases "under investigation" while AP had 54,488 pending cases by the end of 2104. Senior police officials say that shortage of staff and time consuming law and order related duties are the main reasons for cases remaining pending at the investigation stage.
“Most officers have VIP bandobast duty multiple times in a week. There are also duties like vehicle checking, patrolling, and community friendly programmes. After all these time consuming duties, it’s impossible to dispose the cases every month,” said a senior police official.
