The city has failed its elderly, yet again.

A break-in at an elderly couple’s house in Dum Dum at 2am on Monday.

Five days earlier, on February 13, a 68-year-old woman with a broken femur was robbed of valuables in her house along the ever-busy Central Avenue.

There was a third strike, on Moore Avenue on Monday evening. Not an elderly target there but a woman alone in the house.

The brazenness of the back-to-back attacks has rung alarm bells across the world.

Tens of thousands of Calcuttans leave the job-starved city to make a living elsewhere, leaving their parents behind. And often alone.

Whether an IT professional in San Francisco, a lawyer in Dublin, or a banker in Mumbai. The concerns now are the same — the safety of their parents.

Anxious and frantic calls kept coming as old parents tried to reassure their children. But to no avail, as many of them are left at the mercy of house helps.

Nikita Chacko, 34, who lives in Dublin has forced her parents to install closed-circuit television cameras in all rooms, including the bedroom.

“But you don’t know what is enough,” she told Metro from Dublin after hearing about the incident in Dum Dum.

“Incidents like these only make my fears grow. Parents are not getting younger. They will only get older and require more support,” said Nikita.

She shifted to Ireland in 2018, after working for a few years in Pune.

“I had looked for opportunities in Calcutta but it was not commensurate to what I should be getting. The gap between what I get now and what the city provides has grown wider,” said Nikita.

Many professionals working outside Calcutta have failed to come back to the city because organisations here have been unable to match their salaries.

Ananya Banerjee, who works in a private bank, moved to Mumbai about two years back. She has left behind her old parents in Garia.

“Courier services come to deliver at the doorstep. My biggest worry is who could be at the door in the name of a courier person or even a bank official,” she said.

“The criminals do their homework, observe for a few months, and only then launch an attack, perhaps targeting the most vulnerable ones knowing well that they are unattended,” Ananya said.

Shekhar Roychowdhury, 70, and his wife Lipi, 67, live on the ground floor of their ancestral house on Golf Club Road. Shekhar’s mother-in-law, who is 94, lives on the first floor with two helps.

“These incidents do bother me. We have CCTV cameras around the house but that will only help the police after something happens,” said Shekhar. Their daughters are in Mumbai. “Even the robbers are smart. They remove the hard disk,” he said.

Nikita’s father, Lawrence Chacko, 64, who lives in a gated community in Taratala, said the elderly were “easy targets”.

“It is presumed that with their children settled abroad they would have cash at home,” said Lawrence.

Many children prefer to see their parents live in a gated community.

Sampa Roy, 65, and Sujit Kumar Roy, 70, shifted to a gated community off EM Bypass leaving their four-storey ancestral house in north Calcutta’s Garpar. Their son lives in San Francisco.

But not all those who live in a gated community feel safe.

“It seems safe otherwise because we have security but there are many labourers and odd-jobs people inside at all times. They are signed in when they enter, but there is no way for us to know whether they are signed out when they leave,” said a 67-year-old woman living in a gated community in Behala.

Shekhar said in a city populated with the elderly, they are easy targets because they are lonely.

“We are targeted by robbers and scammers. An old person who lives alone looks for company and someone to talk to, which makes them all the more vulnerable,” hesaid.