Stolen/Lost or Simply Convenient?

Continuing our quest to understand the curious case of the lost vs. the stolen, CSR pursued the statistics of both such instances in various districts of Delhi. As mentioned in our previous post, the police authorities avoid filing items as “lost” as they are later liable for unresolved thefts and answerable to their district. They avoid these circumstances or so called “jhamela,” through simply reporting the thefts as “stolen” where they can’t take any action (including impending arrests) without a court order.

In the statistics provided to CSR, through the RTI application, we have discovered astounding figures where reports of items lost have reduced from a whopping 3284 in 2014 to just 889 in 2015 in the northern district, Delhi. However, interestingly enough, the number of wallets stolen has constantly been on the rise in the same district! In fact, the ratio of wallets reported lost versus wallets reported stolen is almost 14:1 which is an extremely dangerous statistic. This suggests a risky trend by the Delhi police to shelve off cases for their own convenience. A similar trend was observed in S.J. Enclave where the wallets stolen have consistently been higher than the number of wallets lost. Following is the table documenting this trend in S. J. Enclave, given to CSR by the Delhi Police administration.

However, we have also seen a trend in the Vasant Kunj area of a rise in reports of lost articles has been on the rise, whereas reports of stolen items have been falling. We at CSR work to raise awareness among citizens and police units the differential impact of filing a complaint as ‘lost’ or ‘stolen’.