Nagpur: The development would highlight the dubious working style of Government Railway Police (GRP) at Nagpur. In the past five years, over 3000 complaints of theft were registered with the Nagpur GRP. Out of the 3339 theft complaints, over 1000 complaints remained unsolved. Majority of undetected cases involved theft of mobile phones.
Thousands of passengers travel in trains from Nagpur. Targeting the passengers, gangs of burglars lay their hands on valuables such as jewelleries, high-end mobile phones, laptops and other goods. GRP has been assigned the job to curb such thefts but the figures tell a different tale. Forget detecting the theft cases, the crime has been rising to alarming levels at the cost of railway passengers.
Gold Rate
Wednesday 07 Jan. 2025
In the past five years from 2017 to 2021, a total 3339 cases of theft were registered with Nagpur GRP. Majority of theft cases pertained to mobile phones. In over 1000 cases, neither the burglars were caught nor the stolen goods recovered from the accused. In the first two months of 2022, around 100 cases of thefts were registered with Nagpur GRP.
Challenging task:
Retrieving cell phones stolen in running trains is one of the most challenging tasks for the police as neither the thief nor the victim covers a distance of hundreds of kilometres before the incident comes to fore. However, the Government Railway Police (GRP) Nagpur seems to have managed to find a solution to the arduous task. Continuous tracking of the gadgets and regular follow up of the cases is helping the railway police to double the detection rate in cell phone theft cases, within a year. Moreover, tracking the device, the GRP personnel went up to Delhi, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Visakhapatnam to nab the burglars.
According to statistics of GRP Nagpur, the detection rate was just 14 per cent as out of reported 350 cases, just 48 cases of cell phone thefts were solved in 2020. After taking reins of GRP Nagpur, Superintendent of Police M Raj Kumar came out with a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) and ordered the police personnel to investigate cell phone missing/ theft cases by following the SOP.
As a result, the detection rate zoomed to 34 per cent as the police managed to solve 125 cell phone theft cases out of reported 367 cases in 2021. According to the SOP, the cyber cell officers are trained with new-age systems to track the cell phones.
Following the SOP resulted in getting locations of many stolen gadgets. The locations are followed by GRP teams across the country. Recently, four stolen gadgets were recovered by the police from Rajasthan. The overall detection rate of GRP in 2021 was up by 14 per cent.
In 2021, a total of 185 offences were detected with a detection rate of 27 per cent as compared to just 83 cases solved against a total 617 cases (13 per cent detection rate) in 2020.
