As many as four murders have been committed in the city itself , while another four murders have taken place in the satellite township of Panchkula. Of the four murders committed in the city this year, three murders were committed in a span of just twelve days.

The people of the city were completely shaken when H.S. Brar, a resident of Sector 44, was stabbed to death by two youngsters on February 14. He was attacked by Rohit Makkar and Inderjit Singh, who were marketing credit cards and on this pretext had intended to rob him after entering his house. They were arrested by the police within 24 hours of the occurrence of the crime.

Close on the heels of this murder, a Sector 10 housewife, Pritha Singh, was done to death on February 18 by two floor grinders employed in her house, along with their acquaintance. The domestic servant in the Singh household, Vijay, also sustained serious injuries when he tried to stall the entry of the three accused in the house.

Within two days of the crime, the police achieved success when it arrested the prime accused, Ramzan, a migrant labourer from Colony No. 5. The second accused, Mohammad Sallaudin, was also arrested by the police within five days of the crime from his native village, Jahangir Bassi, in Bhagalpur district, Bihar. The third accused, Barinder, alias Beeru, is still at large.

Even before the city could overcome the shock at murder of the 60-year-old woman, another 45- year-old housewife, Prem Lata Soni, was hammered to death by a brother of her alleged paramour on February 26. The police managed to arrest the accused within four days, but this murder created panic in the city.

The fear psychosis has since seeped into the people's minds, especially considering the fact that the incidents of burglaries, robberies, thefts, prostitution, drug trafficking and liquor smuggling (both local and special law crimes and crimes committed under the Indian Penal Code) are on the rise. This in spite of the fact that the police has been on its toes and city residents maintain that they are satisfied with the police security arrangements.

Says Major D.S. Sandhu, the general secretary of the Chandigarh Defence Colony Welfare Association for the past 10 years, "The people have to come together and make alternate arrangements for their personal security. With the burgeoning population of the city— courtesy the entry of hundreds of migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar each day and thus a growth rate of population almost double the national growth rate — people have to come forward and help the police help them."

His views are supported by Col. Sham Singh, the President of the Residents Welfare Association, Sector 12, Panchkula, who complains that the crime rate in Panchkula has shown an alarming increase in the past five years. He suggests that the Panchkula police could also launch the Neighbourhood Watch Scheme in the city.

This sudden rise in the city's crime graph has also forced many of the denizens of City Beautiful to give a second thought to the safety of their houses and they are reportedly gunning for various hi-tech safety gadgets in the market. The recent murders also created a lot of panic among the city residents as in all the three cases, the assailants had been known to the victims and in the first two cases had struck the unsuspecting victims with the intention of committing robbery.

The various dealers of these safety gadgets have reported that over the past one week they have received numerous inquiries not just from residents of the city, but also from people residing in the satellite townships. "Business has indeed picked up ever since a series of murders took place in Panchkula and later on in Chandigarh during the past three months," informed Manish Gupta, proprietor of Nova Engineers, one of the leading manufacturers of safety gadgets. He claims to have installed safety devices in around 30 houses in Chandigarh and Panchkula alone during the past six months. "Generally, people living in the vicinity of the houses where the crime has taken place get extra cautious and they are the ones who install these devices in panic. After an old couple was found brutally murdered at their residence in Panchkula a few weeks ago, a couple of their neighbours installed safety gadgets in their houses," he informed.

The residents have a wide range of gizmos to choose from — an audio-video door phone, closed-circuit coloured televisions, burglar alarms, video door phones, a two-way bell system et al. However, most dealers confirm that so far they have been only receiving inquiries as people generally take a lot of time to cough up the money needed to make their houses "safe."

Incidentally, the figures available from the police point out that 40 per cent of the murders in the city have been committed with the intention of committing robbery and an astounding 50 per cent of the murders are blind murders. On its part, the police claims to be doing all it can in order to avoid any armed robbery by verifying the servants, tenants and overhauling its beat system.

However, the police, too, claims to be facing various problems as the residents are not ready to cooperate with them in getting their servants and tenants verified or in putting up safety structures in their houses like grills on windows and ventilators, raising of boundary walls to the permissible limits and affixing grills on top, use of cat's eye, door chain, etc.

 

What is the Neighbourhood Watch Scheme

ON January 28 this year the city police embarked upon an ambitious plan to combat the rising crime rate. The scheme was launched in the HIG (Independent ) houses in Sector 38 west. Around 250 houses of the Chandigarh House Board are included in the scheme which covers those residents of the area who are members of the Residents Welfare Association. The police is now planning to launch this scheme in each subdivision in the city within the coming week. The police claims that this scheme will help create cohesiveness in society, which is otherwise missing, and ensure that people stay on the lookout for any untoward incident in the neighbourhood. The scheme will be managed by an executive committee comprising seven coordinators , area councillor, a woman representative, police division officer and beat staff. The committee members will meet the area station house officer once a month. The salient features of the scheme: * Motivate residents to beef up the physical security of their houses * Pooling resources to improve the physical security of the area * Provide a channel of communication between the local police and the residents * Employ watchmen, and persuade residents to verify the antecedents of their servants and tenants with the police. * Urge residents to install additional safety devices on their vehicles and get their registration numbers etched on the window panes. * Devise strategies to keep track of hawkers and vendors visiting the area. * Show special consideration to senior citizens or women living alone.

 

Callous Chandigarh !

* A Sector 15 resident returns home in the evening on March 9, 2000, only to find his 54- year-old wife strangled to death by their domestic servant . The accused escaped with jewellery worth Rs 1 lakh. * The skeleton of 60-year-old Usha Grover, a resident of Sector 18, is discovered from her Sector 18 residence on April 27, 2000, following the arrest of two persons a couple of years after the murder took place. * A lawyer and his wife are found brutally murdered at their Sector 2 residence in Panchkula on January 21, 2001. The Madhoks had been murdered at least 10 days before their bodies were discovered. * A 55-year-old man is brutally stabbed to death by two salesmen in broad daylight on February 14, 2001, even as almost 30 neighbours collect outside his house on hearing his cries for help. The accused make good their escape, with the neighbours choosing to remain mute spectators. Help Thy Neighbour — this lesson seems to belong only to textbooks, with city residents becoming more alienated from each other by the day. Is the absence of a history and culture of the city a reason for this alienation? Or is it that the residents are so caught in the mundane details of life that they have little urge to create a more cohesive web amongst themselves? The city has probably never developed an inherent feeling of bonding with the community. The city is home to people from all over the region — Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. Recently many Kashmiri migrants have also settled here. Other than this, an estimated 250- 300 migrants from Uttar Pradesh, Orissa and Bihar converge on the city each day in pursuit of a better standard of living. These migrants come to City Beautiful in the hope of getting ration cards, voters ID cards and subsequently some accommodation. They stay on with their families. For them it is a city of opportunities, though ironically, they are the usual suspects in most incidents of crime in the city. Since all these people come from different backgrounds and cultures, they find it difficult to bond with their immediate neighbours. Also, a substantial number of youngsters from the city have left it, leaving their aged parents behind. Thus there is need to make these people more security conscious.