NCRB analysis reveals politics, crime nexus

In a revelation made on the basis of figures provided by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), it has been found that while crime has escalated in constituencies held by Samajwadi Party members, communal trouble has been reported from constituencies represented by BJP and BSP members.

A senior police official, who has analysed the NCRB data, spoke to this newspaper on the condition of anonymity on Saturday and said that the pattern and nature of crime was in conformity with the characters of the political parties dominating the region.

“In the past four years, UP has recorded 93 lakh cases of crime and 70 per cent of these have taken place in constituencies held by SP MLAs.

In Lucknow alone, with seven SP MLAs and three ministers, 2.78 lakh criminal cases have been reported. The crimes in these constituencies are related to kidnapping, extortion, murder, loot and land grabbing,” the official said.

The most number of communal clashes took place in areas represented by the BJP and the BSP.

According to NCRB figures, apart from Muzaffarnagar and Saharanpur, the most number of communal clashes took place in Azamgarh, Agra and Gorakhpur.

Azamgarh has nine SP MLAs while Gorakhpur and Agra have more BSP and BJP MLAs.

“The number of clashes, most of which are dismissed as ‘minor incidents’ by the local police, has risen sharply after the Muzaffarnagar riots in 2013 and even cases of eve-teasing tend to snowball into communal riots. In maximum cases, the rioters are supported by leaders of at least one political party,” the official said.

In the Mayawati regime from 2007 to 2012, the number of communal clashes was recorded at 22,300, but the number has crossed the 25,000 mark in the Akhilesh regime.

The police official said that looking at the crime trend, one can safely say that major political parties are responsible for the collapse of law and order situation in the state.

“The fault of the government lies in the fact that action is either delayed or not taken in cases where legislators are directly or indirectly involved, and if the ruling party leaders get away with murder — in some cases, literally — then the cops also avoid action against Opposition leaders,” he said.

Reacting to the trend displayed by the NCRB records, a retired UP DGP said that crime control was largely dependent on political will.

“Ms Mayawati, as chief minister, acted very firmly against her own leaders. She sent her MP Umakant Yadav to jail for land grabbing, Shekhar Tiwari was jailed for lynching an engineer and Purshottam Narain Dwiwedi was arrested for rape. But in this regime, a minister was not even arrested for burning alive a journalist even though his dying declaration was there. In such a situation, how can you expect the cops do act firmly ” he asked.