Madanlal Joshi’s house was robbed while he was away at Rajasthan. Pictures by Gopal Senapati

When the Howrah district was brought under the police commissionerate in September 2011, the residents of Howrah had hoped for a better policing, a drop in crime and a peaceful life. But all that has remained a distant dream. Criminals have gotten away with murders most foul, with daring robberies and petty snatchings. And with the police not being able to nab the culprits, they have got all the more emboldened leading to a rising crime graph in the town.

JUNE 18: Madanlal Joshi, 50, a resident of 14 Rameswar Malia Lane under Howrah police station was away in Bikaner in Rajasthan to attend a relative’s wedding, leaving his fifth floor flat in Sharma Apartments under lock and key since May 30. After his return on June 18, he found the locks of the front gate of his flat broken and jewellery and cash worth Rs 3.5 lakh missing. “Whenever I ask the police about the progress of the investigation they tell me it is ongoing,” said Joshi. He is surprised at how the burglars dared to commit such a crime in an apartment located just half a kilometer from the Howrah police station.

MAY 16: Biswanath Singha, 55, his wife Kalpana, 48, their younger son Sumit, 22 and his sister-in-law Krishna Basu, 52, were found murdered under mysterious circumstances in two separate houses in Sankrail. While the bodies of Biswanath Singha, his wife and younger son were found on the ground floor of the Singhas’ two-storey house, that of his sister-in-law was found in a single-storey house located in the same compound in Nabanagar under Sankrail police station.

Bike-borne miscreants snatched away Rs 45,00 from Sampa Banerjee (left) near the Bank of India branch (above) from where she withdrew the money

From the beginning, police suspected Singha’s elder son, Suman, who discovered the bodies, because of his contradictory statements to the investigating officer. Police asked Suman to visit Sankrail police station for interrogation on May 18. But the boy, who had put up at his relative’s house in Shibpur, fled the same night.

A police team from Sankrail police station visited Lucknow, where he lived, but had to return empty-handed. Till date, the case has not been solved.

“If the police were a little careful, the case would have been solved easily. When they started suspecting Suman they should have deployed a few plainclothes policemen near his relative’s house in Shibpur where he stayed. Then he would not have been able to flee so easily,” said a neighbour of the Singha family.

Sleuths investigate the Sankrail multiple murder case

A senior officer of Sankrail police station admitted that they should have been a little careful and kept an eye on the boy. “Primary investigations revealed that no one saw Suman break open the front door. But the boy told us that he broke the front door with the help of his neighbours. That was when we started suspecting him,” he said. But the police did not want to take the boy to the police station immediately after the cremation of his parents, aunt and younger brother. The officer said that there was more than one person behind the murder.

MAY 8: Sampa Banerjee, 35, a resident of Podra under Sankrail police station, had barely walked a few feet from Bank of India’s Andul Road branch after withdrawing Rs 45,000 when two bike-borne miscreants snatched the bag containing the money and sped off towards Alampur around 12.30pm. There were scores of people near the bank waiting for buses but the miscreants managed to flee before anyone gave them a chase.

Till date the money has not been recovered and the gang behind the crime has not been identified. “The police keep saying that they are trying to identify the gang but more than a month has passed and neither has anyone been arrested, nor has the money been recovered,” said Sampa’s husband Himansu, a cable operator.

APRIL 1: Shyam Rai, 40, a promoter and a resident of Pannalal Basak Lane, was sitting in his makeshift office at Guha Park under Malipanchghara police station when he was shot dead from point blank range around 10.45 pm. Rai’s wife Dhanawati Devi, 36, alleged that Rai had been getting calls from extortionists before his death, demanding Rs 5 lakh. But Rai had refused to pay. “We had repeatedly informed the police of the threat calls from the extortionists. But the police did not take proper action,” said one of Rai’s relatives.

He alleged that while the police arrested a few criminals in this connection but the brain behind the murder is still at large.

JANUARY 22: Burglars entered the second floor of the three-storey building of Bharat Chakraborty, 90, a resident of Swami Vivekananda Road under Shibpur police station. They broke locks and decamped with jewellery and valuables worth Rs 30 lakh. They also took away cash worth Rs 8,000 kept in the almirah. “My uncle used to collect old coins from abroad, particularly from the UK, the US, Germany, Russia and other European countries. The burglars took all of them, including gold and cash. My uncle’s grandson, Arpan, and his wife used to live in the second floor of the building but on the day of the crime they were not there. That indicates that the burglars had prior information about their absence,” said Subhendu Chakraborty, Bharat Chakraborty’s nephew.

Burglars robbed Bharat Chakraborty’s coin collection from his Swami Vivekananda Road residence

He alleged that in the last seven months at least 10 cases of burglary have taken place in Shibpur and Chatterjee Haat police station areas but not a single of them were detected by the police. “We thought that after the police commissionerate took over the policing of Howrah, the law and order situation would improve. But now we have lost that hope,” Chakraborty said.

JANUARY 5: Around 12.30am, a gang of 20 armed robbers broke open the front door of one Sankar Mandal, a resident of Kashmoli under Jaipur police station and looted gold ornaments worth Rs 9 lakh and cash worth Rs 60,000. The robbers beat up Sankar Mandal, 58, his wife Nilima, 52, his 95-year-old mother Durgabala, elder son Subhendu, 34, with iron rods and sticks when they resisted. Four members of the family had to be admitted to the Uluberia sub-divisional hospital with injuries. Till date, the case has not been detected.

“We have been told that four persons were detained by the police but they were later released. We fear that if the gang members go scott free like this, they might strike again,” said Sandip, the younger son of Mandal, who owns a jewellery shop. An officer of Jaipur police station, however, said, “The robbers’ gang must have been from Hooghly and they fled there after committing the crime. We are still trying to identify them.”