A part of the railing that has been stolen. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Dec. 6: The civic authority has undertaken various projects to beautify the city but the vandals have planned it otherwise.

To give the city a makeover, the civic body had planted ornamental saplings on the medians, installed decorative street lights, put up statues at places and protected them with iron girds. However, their plan is going haywire due to indifferent of people and goons in destruction mode.

Earlier, Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation officials were worried about the frequent theft of ornamental lights from important stretches in the central part of the city.

Even decorative saplings planted on road-dividers were stolen. In May, goons vandalised a statue of Newton installed in front of the Institute of Physics on the stretch between Acharya Vihar Square and Sainik School.

Now the officials face another problem — thieves are stealing iron railings erected on both sides of the medians to separating cycle tracks from the road.

This is putting the lives of commuters at risk.

“Such iron barriers have been stolen from medians and bus stops in the city. Though we do not know for sure who are behind this, we suspect the involvement of slum-dwellers. Drug addicts might also be involved in stealing these railings and selling them to scrap dealers,” said a senior civic official dealing with the beautification work in the city.

Sources said many drug addicts and petty criminals in the city were earlier involved in stealing street lights and selling these to get easy money. Some criminals who were arrested earlier by the police had admitted of stealing such things from public places.

The officials said that they would lodge police complaints against such acts. Besides, they have instructed the private bodies carrying out beautification works at different places in the city in public- private- partnership (PPP) mode to lodge police complaints too.

In the past, the city police have arrested several thieves residing in the slum areas and seized decorative lights after the municipal authorities lodged complaints. The police found that these lights, each costing around Rs 10,000 and the stabilizers of high mast lights, each worth around Rs one lakh, were sold by these people in markets outside the state. Such incidents reduced after these thieves were arrested.

The civic and development authorities planted ornamental saplings on the medians to beautify the city in January last year. These plants were stolen within a few months. The corporation officials lodged a complaint with the police but they are yet to make any headway in this case.

Though civic officials said that residents should inform them or the police when they witness such crimes, people said there was some confusion on the issue.

“I have seen people indulging in such acts, but I had mistaken them for corporation-employed people carrying out repairs,” said Pradeep Sahu, a resident of Unit-VI.

A senior police officer said they had been conducting night patrolling. “We act when we get complaints,” said K.P. Mishra, the inspector in charge of Saheed Nagar police station.