GUWAHATI, March 5 - Growing incidents of theft in areas like South Sarania, Pub Sarania hillside, Rajgarh and Gandhi Basti in broad daylight are becoming a cause of concern for the residents of these areas with police failing to solve the cases.
Residents said that the incidents happened when there was no one present at the houses. More than ten cases of theft in broad daylight were registered at the Chandmari Police Station in the last five days.
Kanak Goswami, a resident of Pub Sarania hillside (Ganesh Mandir Path) said, �Theft has become a common crime in our area. Three cases of theft happened within one week. Rs 30,000 cash, gold jewellery and other valuable items were stolen from the house of Santi Kumar Singha yesterday. Moreover, Rs 1.5 lakh and other belongings were stolen from the house of one of our tenants seven days ago. A case was also registered in this regard at Chandmari Police Station, but no arrest has been made yet.�
Goswami further said, �The thieves entered the houses by breaking the safety grill. They are not afraid of the police and that is why such incidents are now taking place even in broad daylight.�
Officer-in-charge of Chandmari PS Biswajit Deka said that most of the daylight thefts happened in the rented houses of the Pub-Sarania Hills where most of the victims are students. To tackle this increasing number of theft cases in the area we had started police patrolling. But we are facing a shortage of manpower�
Deka further said, �We also arrested a thief yesterday with a cell phone. Many arrests were made in the previous months. One of the reasons behind the frequent cases of theft is negligence by house owners.�
Burglary tops the list of different types of crimes committed in the city every year.
