Ten cars stolen daily in State, abduction cases rise five fold in 15 years

A Correspondent

Mariani, Feb 21: A sensatiol case of car theft in Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi's constituency Titabor's backyard has once again laid bare how crimils are having free run in the State due to police laxity.

The car thieves - numbering around four, including a woman - had hired one yanmani's Alto vehicle from Mariani to Golaghat via Jorhat. yanmani was drugged on the Dergaon-Golaghat road and thrown out of the vehicle near Deopani. It is suspected that the thieves fled with the car to galand via Dimapur.

Before executing the plan, the four thieves had put up at a lodge at Mariani.

However, it is learnt that the lodge does not maintain records - including identity documents - of customers. No wonder, police are scrambling for leads into the case.

Surprisingly, the police have not taken any action against the lodge, which also does not have any CCTV camera installed.

While the police top brass in Guwahati are often seen making tall claims of strict regulations being enforced in the State to check the growing crime rate, little seems to have changed in places outside the city, including the CM's home district.

Blame it on the laxity of police, like many other crimes, vehicle theft cases in the State have seen a huge jump. More than ten vehicles are stolen every day in the State. From 493 in 2001, the number of vehicle theft cases has shot up to 4,029 in 2015. With Assam Police failing to put in place a prompt mechanism to check the mece, the crime has increased at a rate of 5-10 per cent every year since Gogoi came to power in 2001.

A majority of the stolen cars remain untraced. It is learnt that the cars are taken to galand where the colour and chassis/ registration numbers etc are changed, given a new look and then sold to customers.

There has not been much improvement in the number of murder cases either. In 2001, 1,367 murders were recorded in the State. In 2015, it was 1,333.

Kidpping, mostly for ransom, has however seen a sharp increase, from 1,454 in 2001 to 6,103 in 2015.