The perpetrators of petty street crimes mostly hail from slum settlements of the city with crime mongers falling prey to vicious traps of drug peddling and narcotic addiction, said senior officials of commissionerate police here.
The involvement of slum dwellers in especially petty street offences is disturbingly more pronounced. The offences mostly range from chain and mobile snatching to pickpocketing. Of late, the involvement of slum settlers’ in house thefts and burglaries is also on the rise. More than criminal instinct or bent of mind, the commission of petty crimes by them is attributed to poverty and joblessness due to pandemics, they said.
“Keeping in view these disturbing findings, the commissionerate police has adopted a two-pronged strategy to dissuade the slum dwellers from turning into lawbreakers and stop them from getting ensnared in the vicious cycle of narcotic drugs”, Police Commissioner, Saumendra Priyadarshi said here on Monday.
A slum outreach programme ‘Basti Ku Chala’ (let us go to the slums) is being launched. The senior police officials will visit the slum colonies and will make a ground-level review of the socio-economic conditions of the people. The outreach programme will hopefully go a long way in bringing down the rate of petty crimes in the city, he said.
The Commissionerate Police continues to adopt its policy of zero-tolerance towards narcotic drugs peddling in the Bhubaneswar Urban Police District (UPD). The police have successfully nabbed several drug peddlers in the recent past in a well-coordinated exercise, he added.