The year 2011 was a mixed bag for the Tamil Nadu police with official statistics now available with this newspaper showing that incidents of murder for gain, theft, rape and dowry death for the year 2011 had come down compared to 2010 though those of crimes such as murder, dacoity, robbery, molestation and kidnapping of women had gone up during the same period.
There was 20 per cent decrease in the number of murder for gain cases. The number, which stood at 153 in 2010, decreased to 123 in the year 2011.
During the same period, the number of rapes also came down from 686 to 677. The number of thefts, which was 14,583 in 2010, had come down to 13,924 in 2011.
However, the total number of murders increased by 2 per cent to 1,747. Dacoities also increased from 85 to 101 and the number of robberies shot up from 4,715 to 4848.
The number of cases of molestation, which was 1,405 in 2010 went up to 1,467 in 2011. Kidnapping of women also increased from 1,464 to 1,743.
At the state level there was a decrease in crime rate by 3.6 per cent, but cities such as Chennai, Madurai and Salem saw an increase in the crime rate during 2011 compared to the previous year.
Coimbatore, Tiruchy and Tirunelveli were among those places that witnessed a decrease in the crime rate.
The crime rate in Chennai where the population is estimated to be around 94.53 lakh, stood at 226 with a 7.5 per cent increase in 2011 compared to 2010.
Tirunelveli city police had managed to bring down the crime rate by 24.7 per cent from 333 to 251 in 2011.