In the process of writing the cover story on Why Bangalore hates the ITculture last week, I went looking for a variety of statistics. One of them was crime figures against IT professionals. That is, of instances in which IT people had become victims. Statistics are collected and collated for two key reasons--if demonstrably shoring up credibility of what you write is one reason, the other is to reassure yourself that you are not actually imagining the story. The crime statistics had reasonably convinced me about the envy or hate factor against IT professionals in the city and had given me the necessary degree of confidence to proceed with the cover idea.
Although Bangalore is called India's Silicon Valley, there is very little preparation on the administration's part to handle the city's special status. For example, I am not sure if there is a customised drill to follow in the event of a terrorist attack on a key IT installation. Forget an attack, is there a plan on hand if there is simply analert? We see it all the time when an IT company receives a bomb threat (one should only be grateful that there have been only hoax calls made so far). The sling-ID employees are herded on the pavement right outside the towering glass facades, while the bomb squad is searching the nook and corner of the building. How safe is it to stand outside the compound and keep working your cellphones when the building is said to be strapped with bombs? If not anything worse, shouldn't oneat least fear glass splinters?
Similarly, despite the many attacks on BPO/ITeS and IT professionals there is no separate or special category under which these crimes are recorded. Crime is a crime, why should it be registered under a special categoryyou may ask, but then how else will you sort, plan action and prevent thesecrimes? Pointed information will undoubtedly bring enormous clarity to the issue and offer a safer profile for the city. In ahi-tech capital, creating a software that documents such specifics shouldn't be a problem.
But, anyway, in the absence of such specific details, the city is lucky to have some earnest police officers. When I made a request for statistics of crime against IT people to Gopal Hosur, the city's joint commissioner (crime), he quickly saw meaning in building such an inventory and put his men on the job. Over three weeks, after carefully sifting FIRs lodged in various police stations of the city, the statistics that emerged, expectedly, told a very interesting story. Quite randomly we chose to look at crimes that had taken place since 2004 till present.
Take a look at figures for
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2004: There were no cases reported under 302 IPC (murder) that targeted IT people. There were no dacoity cases under 395 IPC. Under 392 and 394 IPC there was robbery in ten houses of IT people. There were nine cases of extortion under 384 IPC. There was one case of cheating registered under 420 IPC. No attempt to murder case under 307 IPC and also no cases under 323 and 324 IPC (hurt). But, there were 131 cases under 379 IPC, which in police parlance would mean ordinary theft. Hosur clarified that theft cases mostly pertain to loss of mobile phones, credit cards and such things.
2005: There were four cases of murder; two cases of dacoity; 19 cases of robbery; five cases of extortion; four cases of cheating and a high volume of 140 cases under the ordinary theft category.
2006: Two murders; one dacoity; 19 robberies; five cases of extortion; 7 cases of cheating; four cases under the hurt category and again a high instance of 115 ordinary theft cases.
Almost ditto in 2007 till November: one murder; two dacoities; 12 robberies; two extortion cases; 15 cases of cheating and yet again 130 cases of ordinary theft.
If one adds up the cases under the ordinary theft category it would come upto 516 cases across four years. Let's not get into the question of whether this is less ormore. That would depend on where you are situated and what you are exposed to. But for a Bangalorean this is alarming. Ordinary cases of theft are also not usually reported. If you lose your credit card, you call the customer care of the bank, block the card and ask for a replacement. If you lose your mobile, you call the service-provider, block the number and pick up a new handset. Therefore police officers confirm that this is the most underreported category and yet the figures are pretty high.
My spin on this statistic is that this is not pre-meditated or cold-blooded crime like murder or dacoity, but simple envy or hate-crime. You can't do much with a credit card or a cell number that gets quickly blocked. Very rarely can you hack your way through a credit card to siphon off money. But, what you can do is cause discomfort and anxiety to the person who has lost the credit card or cell phone. In this case you derive vicarious pleasure by putting the techie under pressure. Vicarious pleasureat their discomfort is perhaps a result of envy.
One of the tips that security people offer techies is not to let their company ID cards dangle down their necks in public. This is to prevent them from being easy targets of mugging or even cheating of the kind that is never picked up by the police radar--overcharging by vendors.
If you have personal stories of envy-crime which you never reported to the police to save yourself the hassle, consider writing to us about it.
