NEW DELHI: The city records more than 20 incidents of snatching a day, seemingly random incidents of mobiles being yanked from people’s hands and chains from their necks that leave victims traumatised and fearful for months and sometimes even years later.
Snatchings may not figure very high in the crime spectrum but they do point to increasingly unsafe streets with many citizens questioning the effectiveness of those who police the streets. The scars stay on, even when the physical injuries fade, say men and women who have survived snatching attempts and watched their attackers flee.
With the recent incident of snatchers stabbing to death a woman who resisted their robbery bid in northwest Delhi’s Adarsh Nagar, the fears have exacerbated. Anam Javed, who works at a leading government hospital, still trembles when she recalls her experience with snatchers in February. She was travelling in an auto-rickshaw when two men on a scooter pulled off her chain in Delhi Gate in central Delhi. It was around 6 pm and still light.
“I was supposed to take a cab but it didn’t come, so I took an auto-rickshaw instead. I had just left Daryaganj on the way to my PG accommodation in south Delhi. My auto was moving with speed when two men riding a Scooty suddenly came near me and snatched my phone near the Delhi Gate area,” Javed said. “They first tried to snatch my bag strapped across my shoulder and I was dragged to the edge of the seat, almost to the point where I could have fallen off the vehicle.
They got hold of my phone and sped away,” she added. The 25-year-old from Rampur in Uttar Pradesh had finished her master’s degree from Jamia Millia Islamia in December 2020, and lost volumes of key documents and photographs stored in her smartphone. Her attackers were wearing masks but not helmets.
Journalist Kunal Dutt had a similar experience in March and said he is still in shock. On March 2, three motorcycle-borne men snatched his mobile phone from a moving auto-rickshaw on a busy flyover in south Delhi.