All crime and no punishment

By Joginder Singh

The crime profile in India is changing. Crime is no more as it used to be understood in the past, like murders, dacoity, thefts, cheating or road accidents. Infact, change is something, which is going on all the time. There used to be mafia organised crimes in 1980, which in 1990's was replaced by the likes of Dawood Ibrahim, Chotta Rajan, and Shakeel, who changed their tracks by diversifying into smuggling of silver, gold and electronic goods, apart from extortion and protection business. Generation of money of black variety through crime has been used to multiply by investing it in film industry, real estate and big business, through sending it back to India, through the legal channels. Bollywood connections opened new avenues for crime and extortion as it was perceived to be an easy method of making money. In the absence of people like Dawood, many other gangs have sprung up, providing the same services and using the same methods of extortion. In the brush with Police, many were eliminated in encounters. But it does not mean that the gangs are finished once for all.

With liberalisation of economy and a lot of money floating around, new types of economic crimes are coming up, like the human trafficking, prostitution, fake recruitment and fake visas, for sending people abroad drug, trafficking, bank scams, stock exchange scams, credit card, internet and lottery frauds. The free economy and temptation to make money has led to a surge in business frauds and corruption. The murder, robbery, assault and other types of violent and property crimes might fluctuate from time, to time, but liberalisation has led to a marked increase in accounting and corporate infractions, fraud in health care, Government procurement and bankruptcy, identity theft, illegal corporate espionage and intellectual property piracy. With increasing frequency, white-collar and indulging in corruption seems to be the crime of choice of modern generation.

No week goes by without news of credit and frauds or cheating the banks or selling fake securities or Bonds, despite there being many criminal trials against the offenders.

White collar crime. But otherwise, economic offences, are much more dangerous, than thefts, and pick pocketing and have a potential of wiping off a person's total life savings. Infact, the focus of the crime is changing so fast, that it has left the traditional crime behind. The motive of all crime is economic whether it is, a lap top, car, motorcycle, gold, diamond, silver, wrist watches, sun glasses, CD players, or a jewellery thief, or a robber or a dacoit of an MBA stealing cars or any army officer indulging in illegal sale of liquor. The crime is with a view to get rich quickly, without working for it. There is an interesting case of thief whose profile, as under reads like that of an officer worker.

Workdays; weekdays

Work hours : 9 am to 5 pm

Holidays: Saturday, Sunday and gazetted holidays

Attire : business formal, with a laptop on shoulder

Transport: car or motorbikes

Language: fluent in English and Hindi

With his polished personality, fluency in English and immaculate timing, this Calss X-pass 30-year-old thief had kept the police of four states on their toes for the last one decade. He burgled over 550 houses in Delhi, Mumbai, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, All dressed up, the educated thief used to target up per-floor houses that were locked during the day. He used to break open locks easily by a small iron rod and picked up whatever cash, jewellery and electronic items, he could lay his hands on. He didn't spend more than 15 minutes in one house. His target was to earn Rs 10,000 a day and did not mind stealing from more than one house per day, to make up this figure.

Another type of crime, which has emerged recently, is the fraud of internet, which cashes on the gullibility and greed of the victims. Many become victims of it, in their desire to get rich quickly. This takes the form of cheating people through claims of fake lottery wins. A typical email reads as under;

Dear friend,

‘‘ I know that this mail will come to you as a surprise. I am the bill and exchange manager in bank of Africa Burkina Faso. I hoped that you will not expose or betray this trust and confident that I am about to repose on you for the mutual benefit of our both families.

We need your urgent assistance in transferring the sum of $22.5 million immediately to your account. The money has been dormant for years in our bank here without any body coming for it.

We want to release the money to you as the nearest person to our deceased customer (the owner of the account) who died along with his supposed next of kin in an air crash since July 2002.

We don't want the money to go into our bank treasury as an abandoned fund. So this is the reason why I contacted you, so that we will can release the money to you as the nearest person to the deceased customer. Please we would like you to keep this proposal as a top secret and delete if you are not interested.

Upon receipt of your reply, I will send you full details on how the business will be executed and also note that you will have 30 per cent of the above mentioned sum if you agree to transact the business with me, 10 per cent will be set aside for expenses incurred during the business, I will not fail to bring to your notice that this transaction is hitch free and that you should not entertain any storm of fear.

I expect that your reply for more details immediately you receive this letter. Yours faithfully.

After a person has received the email, then he is told to send some money as processing fee. Fraudsters make their fortunes out of the processing fee collected and then disappear. People have been caught, but still there is no end to this fraud.

In this kind of fraud, experts in internet, who have worked in BOP companies even in India have been involved and some even arrested. This kind of a crime does not find any mention in the crime manuals or even of the Indian Penal Code. But the omnibus Evidence Act and Criminal Procedure Code are applicable everywhere, in the absence of any specific laws. We need not only to update our laws, but also be willing to change and scrap them with the change in circumstances and conditions. But one thing is certain that with the increase in population, the crime is bound to increase, and the understaffed, ill equipped and ill trained is hardly a match for the new demands placed on it. In short, the police in our country is plagued by multifarious duties, which have only marginal connection with the actual work of prevention and detection of crime.

To declare that in the administration of criminal law the end justifies the means- to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure conviction of a private criminal-would bring terrible retribution. Of course, the citizens expectations are that a criminal should be caught in the morning, tried in the afternoon and convicted by evening. This happens only in films, whch necessarily has to be finished within three hours.

In 1830 by the then Governor of Bombay, Sir John Malcolm, observed as under, about the laws made by the British, which are incidentally still governing the police system in the country. ‘‘The task of seizing the most notorious criminal is easy as compared to that of proving their guilt, according to the principles and the forms of our courts of justice.

There is seldom that full evidence they require, and the consequence is the annual discharge of well known plunderers to recommence their career of guilt and to take ample vengeance on those whom they suspect of having aided in their apprehension. If our laws are not modified to meet this evil, it can alone be mitigated by the change in the executive branch of the police, in those province that are inhabited or subject of the in-roads of predatory tribes.’’

Unfortunately, the Governments irrespective of the party in power, have failed to improve the situation. (PTI)

(Author is former Director CBI)

Obesity epidemic

By Jyotsna Pandit

In the post-liberalisation era more and more young people of marriageable age are taking to liposuction to reduce unwanted body weight. A study coordinated by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, late last year showed that 43 per cent of the 35,000 people surveyed in 10 industrial cities-including Bangalore, Coimbatore, Delhi and Dibrugarh-are overweight. The incidence of abdominal obesity for men and women (waistline 90 cm and 85 cm, respectively) is more than 30 per cent. Two years ago, when AIIMS studied obesity trends in children from the high-income group in Delhi, it found that 27 per cent of them were overweight and seven per cent obese.

The number of people joining weight-loss clinics is another indicator of the size of the problem. Rupam, centre manager of a Vandana Luthra Curls and Curves clinic in Delhi, says that five years ago, an average of 100 people visited the centre daily. These days, the number of people walking in is about 250 a day.

Obesity in India-or elsewhere in South Asia-has a unique racial feature. Unlike people in the West, South Asians have less muscle tissue in the body. And they have a propensity to accumulate fat on the abdomen, unlike Europeans who usually accumulate flab all over their body, and Africans who tend to put on weight on their buttocks.

Experts dealing with obesity in India have realised one thing: Western standards for judging it are ineffective. A back-of-the-envelope calculation often involves what is known as the body mass index (BMI)-a person's weight (in kilograms) divided by his or her height (in metres) squared. Someone who is 1.7 metres tall and weights 80 kg will have a BMI of 27.68 (80/1.7x1.7). The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in the US considers the BMI range of 18.5-24.9 normal. Those belonging to the 25.0-29.9 range are overweight, and a BMI of 30 or more makes someone obese.

Experts cite a host of reasons for Indians getting fatter: there is an unending list of 'new' habits to be blamed. "Dramatic changes in our foods are primarily responsible for the mess," comments Delhi-based nutritionist Vimala Chandra. "We've drifted quite far from our traditional diet which used to be well balanced. We eat much less home-made items these days. What the restaurants and fast food joints offer is loaded with fats and refined sugars." But fast food, argues psychiatrist Sameer Parikh of Max Health Care, New Delhi, has become "a necessity in the fast life that people lead today."

A busy work schedule, clearly, affects one's health. Most of Roopam's patients in Gurgaon, for instance, are IT professionals. "They work long hours, eat at odd hours and complain that work doesn't permit them any time for exercise, outdoor activities or recreation," she observes.

Cardiologist Naresh Trehan aptly sums up the situation when he says, "Indians now prefer to drive to the toilet." He notices what he calls "a socio-psycho-economic factor" at play. "The economy of our country is stronger now," he says. "Sociologically, we have an expression of success, while psychologically, we want to express love." Notes Trehan, "Indians tend to show affection through food. The fact that dads and moms have more to spend these days means more indulgence in food."

Habits apart, are Indians genetically predisposed to obesity too? Yes, says Arup Ratan Gautam, anthropology department, Delhi University. He cites the so-called 'starving gene' theory to explain the phenomenon. "Because we've been underfed for thousands of years," explains Gautam, "we've endowed with genes that help store fat so that we can withstand famine. Though those conditions are no longer there, our genes still are."

Worldwide, researchers are also delving deep into the link between obesity and type 2 (adult-onset) diabetes. According to D. Prabhakaran, associate professor, cardiology, AIIMS, abdominal fat in Indians is suspected to resist the production of insulin, heightening the risk of diabetes. In a study involving 212 people aged 30-years and above, A.B. Das Chaudhuri, professor of anthropology and human genetics at Delhi University, found that 47 per cent of the abdominally obese people suffered from problems such as diabetes and high blood pressure.

"The obesity epidemic in Indian society is critically felt among the adolescents," comments Vandana Luthra, proprietor of a chain of fitness and slimming centres in the country. Launched 17-years ago, her outfit has 84 centres in 46 cities now. Of late, it has also started interactive sessions in some public schools in Delhi to make parents aware of the impact of their children's eating habits.

Not everyone, however, is oblivious to the dangers ahead. And among those who glimpsed a new awareness was Pepsi Foods, which introduced Diet Pepsi to the Indian market five years ago. Abhiram Seth, executive director of the company, won't divulge figures, but says the market for the diet drink is small and primarily urban. "But it's a core consuming group which is calorie conscious," he says.

The soft drink market reveals the Indian mindset. Though the craving for a careless calorie intake-reflected in the high sales of carbonated drinks-is still enormous, the concern for the new epidemic-shown in the demand for the diet brands-is mounting. Waking up to the menace is a must, or else most Indians will soon become diabetics, hypertensives or patients of some form of cancer. (INAV)