Chennai: Successive Chief Ministers have hailed it as the Indian version of the famed Scotland Yard, but now an 18-month-old dog of a German tourist couple is threatening to blow up that halo. Chennai cops continue to gape at the petition filed by the Steffan Kaggrah-Janine couple at the Marina station late Saturday evening that their Luke was stolen from them on the beach.
“The police seem clueless despite the strong clue they already have— the thief was an autorickshaw driver. And they (police) have an active network of informers from among the auto drivers. It should not take more than a couple of days to zero in on the thief by just tapping those informants”, said an ex-cop who has handled quite a few tricky cases—“some with success and some with sore feelings”.
“After all, a full-grown dog is not a little puppy doll that can be hidden in the thief’s cupboard. It should not be too difficult, particularly since so much of TV and newspaper coverage has been given to the incident, with liberal splash of photos and videos of the couple and the dog”, said the man, bitter that his dear force’s fair name is thus threatened by an “intercontinental ballistic missile fallen into the hands of a rogue auto terrorist”.
Senior officers in the city police insist that “best efforts” were on to nab the thief and restore the smiles on the Germans. They also deny that not enough was being done because “it’s just a dog and the complainant will be soon gone, anyway”.
“We have taken this case seriously. We do not want these foreign tourists to leave our city with a bitter feeling that they have lost their dear dog here”, Chennai East Joint Commissioner of Police S. Manoharan told DC.
But then, his men at the Marina police station were not that ‘serious’ when the distressed Germans drove in with their Luke-stolen cry. “The response of the police station was that they don’t really know what to do”, Steffan had told the media soon after lodging his complaint. “They (police) told us there are no CCTV cameras in the area, so they are unable to have any clue where he might be going”.
“Well, that’s a bit funny, to put it mildly”, said Prof V. Chandrasekhar, president, Senior Citizens’ Group of Besant Nagar. “When I was assaulted and robbed by three bike-borne hoodlums on the Besant Nagar beach road about three years ago and went bleeding to the police station to report, the cops there told there is nothing much they could do since there were no CCTV cameras in that area. They caught the three fellows months later because I gave them the registration number and I raised hell in the media. The case is still going on in the Saidapet court”.
“Public places such as Marina and Besant Nagar beaches are so crowded and hence vulnerable to attack by thieves, armed gangs, even abductors. They told me there were no CCTV cameras three years back and now they are telling the German tourists there are no CCTV cameras at Marina. What if a ransom-seeking gang grabs a kid in the beach? What’s the point in spending crores of rupees on modernising the police force if public safety is not guaranteed?” wondered the senior Chennaiite.
He said police ignored the offers of corporate sponsors for CCTV cameras.
Journalists are eternal cynics, rendered so by years of watching-reporting corruption and inefficiency among the administrators; still, as a reporter in the crime beat for almost two decades, I still nurse the hope that JC Manoharan’s men will find Luke and flood that emptiness in the German van with happy yelping and lots of laughter.
