RAWALPINDI, Oct 11: The city has seen an increase in violent offences and street crime, but the record is becoming cleaner by the day.

According to official crime figures, 11,047 cases were recorded between January and September as compared to 11,558 in the same period last year, showing a drop of 511 cases. But the fear of being a victim of crime has grown.

Though the RPO Rawalpindi Nasir Khan Durrani had issued a stern warning to the police asking them to achieve a steep reduction in violent street crimes and vehicle lifting but there has been no improvement in the situation.

Not only vehicles snatching/theft and robberies have registered an increase but other kinds of crime too have gone up.

Perhaps most worrying situation is that in the Rawalpindi district, 225 murders and 316 murder attempts cases were reported this year as compared to 179 and 303 respectively in the same period last year.

Since the terrorists have been striking the city, hundreds of police officials have been assigned to providing security to VIPs and protecting government buildings. That has pushed the figure of street crime up, a police official said.Robberies in all their forms went up to 437 from 403 in the nine month period.

The figure showed that 1116 vehicles had either been taken away or snatched from different parts of the city as compared to the 1046 vehicles in the same period last year.

Besides release of car lifters, the traffic wardens are also held partially responsible for rising car snatching/lifting incidents as they do not check the suspicious vehicles plying on the roads, a senior police official said. Since the wardens are newly inducted, needed some more time to be trained for the job, he added.

He said burglaries dropped from 399 in 2007 to 386 in 2008 but general theft went up to 581 from 534.

The crime situation has not improved as the number of cases related to the recovery of stolen goods had been really sad as 95 cases were solved in the nine months as compared to the 209 in the previous year.

The figure also revealed a sharp rise in the cases, involving police personnel in the crimes as it jumped from 10 cases in the last year to 51 in the current year.

But the cases of under-trial prisoners escape dropped to 9 from 15 in the nine months period.

An old time citizen said in his comments that the crime situation in Rawalpindi is really bad.

“You can not sleep at night. The children become afraid in their own home. It is really sad to see what has become a city. It is the city of crime and an ideal place for criminals enjoying freedom to commit crime,” he said.

Another citizen Aftab said: “I believe the crime rate in Rawalpindi will not decrease unless the government invests in the youth of the nation and strictly follow the merit while appointing the police officers from top to bottom.”