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Does Uttar Pradesh Government Romesh Bhandari have a magic wand? It
definitely seems so because only that could have brought down the
crime rate as drastically as he claims.
"There is no logical reason for the crime figures to come down so
much. There is large scale burking (non-registration of crime).
And it can only be done successfully with the blessings of the
political masters. For the past eight months, we have been
extremely careful in registering cases and it is on the orders of
the Governor," disclosed a senior UP police officer.
When everything - the political uncertainty, the socio-economic
factors like caste and religion, and the growing population - is
conducive to growth in crime, 'there is no explanation for the
crime there is nor explanation for the crime graph to show a
downward slide.
The UP director general of police Haridas Rao had admitted that
there was reluctance in crime registration due to political
interference at the police station level. In the present political
scenario, the police station staff does not know who might become
powerful tomorrow, so they do not want to take chances, said the
DG.
>From 549 crimes (registered under the Indian Penal Code) a day in
the time of Kalyan Singh's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government
in 1991-92, to 360 a day in the past eight months of Bhandari's
governorship, there is nothing which explains the fall in the crime
rate.
"Nothing can be more absurd than this," said former UP police chief
N S Saksena. "The state has mastered the art of not registering
crime in order to produce beautiful statistics," he added.
Saksena, head of the UP Police in 1970-71 and member of National
Police Commission (1978-81), said the concealment of crime was
nothing new and had been done under various governments in the
state. The crime figures in the year 1905 stood at 443 per day.
Bringing it down to an astonishing 360 a day in 1996 was nothing
but concealment, the retired state police chief said.
Giving example of the burglary cases, he said that the crime had
been showing a steady decline in figures from the year 1905. From
81,000 burglary cases to 9,780 in 1996 did not reflect the true
picture at all. Keeping in view the increasing population, it was
not possible that burglaries could have come down to one-ninth from
the beginning of the century, he said.
However, if figures were any criterion of the crime situation and
the "anarchy' in UP, then the state witnessed its worst during the
short but stormy tenure of Mayawati. The brief five month period '
from June to October 1995, of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) reign
saw the highest crime rate in the past five years with 567 cases
being reported every day.
But crime against women, murders, kidnappings for ransom and
road-holdup - the crimes terrorising the people of UP were the
maximum in times of Mulayam Singh Yadavs Samajwadi Party (SP)
government. The rule under the present Union Defence Minister was
marked by as many as 24 murders every day, one kidnapping for
ransom a day and a road holdup every other day.
Highest number of women were raped molested and kidnapped during
the Samajwadi Party rule between December 1993 to June 1995. Every
day, on an aver, age, five women were raped, eight molested and
seven Kidnapped.
It is the rate of these three crimes which is generally taken as a
touchstone of safety of the common man in any place, specially in
the volatile state of UP. After the BSP regime, it was the during
Kalyan Singh's time that the state witnessed the maximum crime.
And it was the President's rule in 1993 which came next to the BJP
regime.
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