Palghar : Successful and flawless back-to-back dacoities in Vasai and Virar over the weekend have exposed the lawlessness in Vasai Taluka and has given its people sleepless nights as Palghar police have failed to accomplish deter in the minds of anti-social elements.
Burglaries and Dacoities have become an everyday affair as various kinds of gangs like Dirt Gang, Chaddi-Banian gang etc have become active. While 65 thousand rupees were looted on Saturday, 2 lakh 65 thousand were looted during Sunday’s dacoity from a single flat. Surprising part of these two dacoities were that the dacoits had targeted posh localities in Vasai (E) and Virar (W) and in case of Vasai east the gang had targeted a building right behind the office of Additional SP causing a major embarrassment to the force. The locals have now been contemplating to increase the number of security guards as the cops have been branded as completely inefficient while the dacoits appear in huge numbers like 7 or 8 and easily overpower a single security guard as it happened during Saturday’s dacoity wherein the single security guard was tied with a rope and mercilessly beaten up.
Lack of manpower: While the state has a ratio of around one police personnel for every 650 citizens the case is completely different and dreadful in Vasai Taluka with a population of around 20 lakhs. Tulinj police station in Nalasopara east, which has around 132 police personnel to its name, controls almost 5lakhs of population, making it very difficult and almost impossible to check the crime. The proposals for more man power and additional police stations have been pending with the state government while frequent follow-ups by politicians and senior police officers haven’t yielded any results. A police official from Nalasopara said that they don’t even have enough back up like vehicles required for night patrolling. The police do sometimes conduct combing operations but even that hasn’t let any deter amongst the anti-social elements.
The Palghar police have been so occupied with the crimes happening around that while they try to investigate a murder someone is raped elsewhere and by the time the rapist is captured someone else is kidnapped.
Vishal Rajemahadik
