Salt Lake is in the limelight for all the wrong reasons. Community service vans, cycle patrolling, manual patrolling, picketing, night patrolling — all these and more are in place. But still the police have failed to combat the rising menace of thefts there.

Previous data shows that the crime graph in Salt Lake has been more or less constant — the number of thefts was 143 in 2005, 123 in 2006 and 130 last year.

Yet, the spate of robberies this year has once again put a question mark on the safety of Salt Lake residents. And, of course, a blame game is on between the locals and the police.

Problems galore
Till now, Salt Lake remains a sub-division in spite of repeated and concerted efforts to bring it under a separate police commissioner.
The entire police force comprises of 664 personnel for the area’s 2.5 lakh residents. Out of this, a large number of police officers are engaged in providing round-the-clock security to 18 VIPs, incurring a cost of over Rs 1 crore.
Salt Lake has innumerable entry and exit points all of which cannot be manned round-the-clock. Entry of people due to the development of Rajarhat has also made the task difficult for the police.
Some neighbouring areas like Kadapara and Ultadanga that shelter anti-social elements do not fall under the jurisdiction of the Bengal police. This leaves the area vulnerable.
Police also admit that the social structure in Salt Lake is very different. “A resident is not aware of what is happening next door,” says Madan Mohan Pal, officer-in-charge of the Bidhannagar (East) police station.
Locals complain S R Chatterjee of Karunamoyee Housing Estate feels that in addition to night patrols, patrolling in the afternoon is also necessary as that is the time when womenfolk are alone at home.
Sanjukta Bose of FD block was the victim of a recent theft. She was robbed of cash and valuables worth Rs 30,000. Even though the police have a system of registering the names and addresses of all domestic helps, no one uses this facility. “The problem is that the police have not worked towards creating awareness about it. So most of people do not know that they are supposed to register their domestic helps,” said a resident.
Residents of most blocks complained that the number of policemen allotted for each block is not enough and there should be random checking of people entering Salt Lake at odd hours.