Delhi: After last year’s riots, crime graph goes down in northeast district

NEW DELHI: A year after the riots, the crime situation in

North East district

seems to have improved substantially. Data compiled by police shows a dip in snatching and robbery cases, the two prime indicators of street crime in a city, in 2020 compared with the previous year.


Even this year, the fall has continued as crime data till mid-February shows a decline in snatchings compared with the corresponding period in 2020.

Last year, 956 calls of robbery were made from North East district against 1,353 in 2019. This was a decrease of 20.3%. In 2020, 2,460 snatchings were reported against 4,225 in 2019, a decline of 41.8%. In 2021, 349 snatching cases were reported till February 16 against 518 last year, a dip of 32.6%.

The dip in crime is being attributed to Delhi Police commissioner SN Shrivastava’s focused approach towards having robust beat policing and basing the patrolling plan on crime mapping and geofencing data.

Sources said that hotspots were identified by analysing PCR calls from each of the 11 police stations in the district and assigning the routes of patrol bikes accordingly. PCR calls are the true indicators of the crime situation in an area as police have no control over registering them, unlike FIRs.

Patrolling was stepped up in areas like Khajuri Khas, Bhajanpura, Karawal Nagar, Gokalpuri, Jafrabad and Dayalpur, which were among the worst hit during last year’s riots. Many criminals fled to other states fearing arrest, police claimed.

North East district, police say, is considered one of the most crime-prone areas in Delhi. A porous border with UP, dense demography and existence of local rival gangs makes the area vulnerable. For over a decade, criminal gangs led by Irfan Chhenu and Abdul Nasir have been at loggerheads. Over two dozen deaths have occurred in gang wars in the last few years. Other gangs cannot function in the area without being affiliated to either one of them.

Sources said a transfer to the district was an unofficial “hard posting” for police officers and a good performance usually meant a “peace posting”.

Meanwhile, DCP (North East) Ved Prakash Surya was among the 16 officers reshuffled on Tuesday. He has been posted to Rashtrapati Bhavan. Sanjay Sain, a 2011-batch IPS officer, has now been posted there.

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