Mumbai: According to the latest round of NCRB data, Mumbai is the country’s most unsafe city for senior citizens. The city has a record now of retaining this pole position on this metric for the third year in a row.
The number of cases of crime against those aged above 60 has progressively come down in Mumbai from 2016 to 2018 (the last year for which NCRB has released data), and the rate (cases per lakh population) has gone down as a consequence.
In all, 1,043 cases of crime against senior citizens were registered in Mumbai in 2018, a 6.5% drop is seen in 1,115 cases in 2017, it was an 8.5% drop on 1,218 cases in 2016.
As per cases of 2018, while Mumbai led on this crime metric (with a crime rate of 24.7 cases per lakh population), Delhi was second (18.2), followed by Ahmedabad (17.3), Chennai (11.7) and Nagpur (4.9).
A senior IPS officer said “Elderly people who live alone are a vulnerable group. They are dependent on caretakers, who are hired. In a majority of crime cases, it has been found that caretakers were perpetrators,” “Also, there are gangs that target senior citizens out for a morning walk. Sometimes they relieve the elderly of valuables by even posing as cops!”
As per the NCRB report, senior citizens also fell prey to extortion, grievous hurt, cheating, attempt to murder and dacoity, in that order.
Prakash Borgaonkar, a member of the NGO Helpage India, said “Senior Citizens are soft targets. We have created senior citizen groups where they are made aware that they need to get names and numbers of their employees registered at the local police station.”
