Families away on vacation, burglars score a century

Nagpur: When families go on vacations, burglars work overtime. In May, burglary cases crossed the 100 mark putting cops in a spot of bother.
City police chief Amitesh Kumar has already identified the crime hotspots, increased surveillance and stepped up vehicle patrolling but still the number of burglaries has become a challenge for him now.

Statistics of the city police showed around 105 burglaries, which is around 30% of the total housebreaking thefts, that took place this year (349 till May).
In January, which is also considered a favourite time for holidaying, 75 burglaries were registered in the city.
Last year too, 83 burglaries were recorded in May, the highest in the first five months of 2022. Only in 2021, burglaries were relatively lesser in May with only 62 getting reported but 74 took place in January.
A sizeable chunk of the burglaries took place when families were on vacation. There were other reasons too for people going out of town.
In most of the other cases, families were either out attending marriages, parties, meeting friends or relatives, shopping, visiting doctors, hospitalization and for funerals.
In at least two cases, burglars drove away with cars of house owners.
After housebreaker Naresh Mahalinge drove away with the house owner’s car and around ₹1.5 crore, cops recovered around 50% of the cash.
While on the run, Mahalinge is likely to have burgled the residence of one Ajani family near Gondwana Chowk and drove away with their car too.
Kumar, who chaired a meeting of senior officers, too spent time brainstorming over the methods to curb burglaries.
The top cop also provided additional manpower at every police station, added a fleet of vehicles and increased patrolling in affected localities.