Spate of ROBBERIES leave police RED-FACED

Important areas of Salcete taluka like Margao, Colva and coastal belt have been plagued by robberies in the last five months, the loot amounting to over Rs 15 lakhs. However, no one has ever bothered to question what happens to the case after it is registered. Herald attempts to reveal the glaring deficiencies in the investigative mechanism of the police and the reason why several people still don't bother to register crimes they face.

The robberies happening in Salcete always amount to huge sums of money because of gold stored inside homes. Since the beginning of this year, two robberies to the tune of up to Rs 6 lakhs and several others worth Rs. 1 and 2 lakhs have taken place. The robbers have struck the coastal areas and also the central areas of the town.

The investigation in the cases, however, is slow surprisingly even after several clinching evidences provided by the victims to the police. The people have now started questioning the system of policing and are now getting discouraged to file complaints.

A closer look to the entire process and line of investigation adopted by the police has revealed lots of flaws and inconsistencies. The Home Department should make investigation of crimes, like robberies, time bound. It is also revealed that the police stations may have staff for bandobast but due to less staff inside the station there is lot of backlog in the cases.

There have been instances where 6 to 7 houses have been robbed in 50 metres proximity of previously robbed houses. But only one overall case is registered. People, who had earlier gone to register the case at the police station, spoke to Herald on anonymity. They said, "When we went to register a case we were told at a police station that they would register it but if there is no strong evidence like CCTV footage there is no chance of tracing it".

A victim of this spree of robberies is a salaried person from Pedda, Adrian Torres. Looking at the snail’s pace investigation of a robbery at his house he decided to write to the Superintendent of Police of South Goa.

Adrian wrote, "A burglary occurred in my flat situated at Kurtarkar Glory, Pedda, Benaulim on the intervening night of March 2 – March 3, 2017 and the robbers decamped with the gold and cash all worth Rs 6.48 lakhs. The Colva Police had registered the case and is investigating. However, nearly two months have passed, and the investigation seems to be heading towards the expected directions and very often found that the police officials concerned are adopting casual approach to the case despite assuring the fullest co-operation from my end.”

Adrian has surprisingly produced evidence to the police which is good enough to track down the culprits. However, he said that every time he asks the Investigating Officer at Colva Police station on the progress the official says that they are processing it.

Torres said "Robbers are 10 steps ahead of the police and their ideas of investigation. Even after giving CCTV footage there is no breakthrough for 3 months. This only shows how trained Goa police is to handle such crimes," he said.

It was also revealed that the police do patrolling in the areas for 10 days mostly after the robberies take place but there is no vigil after that period.

Herald also got to understand that the number of recovery of stolen valuables like gold and cash from the nabbed robbers has been minuscule from the side of police. Compared to Karnataka and Maharashtra police they have been coming to Goa to recover gold from small time jewellers to whom robbers generally sell the loot.