Authorities alarmed by rising number of first-time offenders

Authorities alarmed by rising number of first-time offenders

Authorities alarmed by rising number of first-time offenders

College students in Noida might have a reason to feel that they are being unfairly targeted, but local cops are now adopting desperate measures to bring down the soaring crime graph in the satellite township. Keeping in mind the involvement of first-time offenders in many petty offences, authorities have now asked colleges for details of students enrolled with them.

Details collected from the institutes will be fed into a databank to be maintained by authorities. Recently police have reportedly come across a lot of cases involving students. Police feel that about 75 per cent of petty street crimes in Noida and Greater Noida - such as robbery and snatching of wallets - are committed by first-time offenders.

Out of these, about half of them are young men doing courses such as MBA and MCA from some college. Since most of them are outstation students, who are hard to track, so maintaining a database will ostensibly help sort out such cases.

Amitabh Yash, Noida Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) said: "We are doing this for the first time for students studying in different colleges in Noida and Greater Noida. We will make it a regular practice from the next academic year onwards. We are asking for details such as local address, permanent address and mobile or landline numbers of the students.

This is a time-consuming process and may take some time to work out." "In fact we have also started receiving data from some colleges. All the information is fed into the computer with the name of the college. We are also requesting other colleges to send all details as soon as possible," Yash added.

Till now requests have been sent to 87 professional colleges located in the district. The administration expects the number to double in the near future. "If something is not done instantly, the situation may worsen in the days to come," believes the new SSP.u00a0u00a0

Once the information is collected, Noida police will pursue the same course for BPO employees and tenants residing in the district.u00a0

Over the past one week or so, more than 20 snatching incidents have taken place in the district. "Even locked houses are not safe. Due to fear of harassment, residents avoid lodging police complaints.

We have requested senior police officers to depute some representatives of the federation or residents from societies as special police officers (SPOs) so that an information network can be created," said KP Singh, General Secretary, Federation of Residents Welfare Associations of Greater Noida.

Cause for corcern

n Last year one such offender was caught by the Noida police.u00a0 Sumit Tyagi (21), an MCA student at an educational institute in Greater Noida in his interrogation, told the police that he had wanted to sell off the car to fund his "personal expenses". According to the FIR, Tyagi robbed a Toyota Innova, a multi-utility-vehicle, on October 14, 2009 by pointing a country-made revolver at the owner.
n In August this year, a student of class IV at a Noida school was kidnapped by one of the employees of his father. Ritwik Singh, 10, was playing in his Sector 12 house when the accused kidnapped him.
The child was playing with another neighbourhood kid. Raju Yadav, the accused, had worked with Ritwik's father Pappu Singh, as a helper in his food catering business but left the job 2-3 years earlier. Raju asked Ritwik and his friend to accompany him to the market to share soft drinks or juice, to which they agreed. As Ritwik knew the man, he and his friend went along. After reaching the market, the man asked Ritwik's friend to bring a Pepsi from the shop and told him that they would be waiting for him at another spot. When the other boy returned from the shop with a Pepsi, he found the duo missing. The case is yet to be solved.

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