The year gone by in Rajasthan saw gangster Anandpal Singh escaping from judicial custody and the arrest of IOC marketing official Mohd Sirajuddin for alleged ISIS links even though police claimed that the overall crime rate declined as compared to 2014.
According to a police headquarters report, altogether 1,70,928 cases of crime including that of murder, robbery, rape, loot, abduction were registered under IPC in the state's police stations till October 2015 as compared to 1,80,211 in corresponding month of 2014, a decline of 5.15 per cent.
Anandpal's escape on September 3 and his still evading law are giving sleepless night to state police as well as embarrassment to the Vasundhara Raje government. Anandpal, whose other accomplices were caught, has over two dozen cases of murders, extortion and kidnapping registered against him.
Following the arrest of Sirajuddin, his father Mohd Sarwar claimed that his son was falsely implicated as exchanging views is not a crime and the ATS FIR "has got loopholes".
Police said Sirajuddin got involved in activities of ISIS about five months ago and was in touch with people of similar ideology from within India and abroad.
A native of Gulbarga in Karnataka, he is in police custody and is being grilled by sleuths of SOG and ATS Rajasthan.
Rajasthan, which ranks third among 10 cities after Delhi and Chennai in terms ofroad accidents, saw BJP MP and actor Hema Malini having a narrow escape last July when her Mercedes rammed into another car near Dausa leaving a two-and-a-half- year-old girl Sonam dead and six persons injured.
The actor's driver was arrested and released on the same day after high drama. Hema Malini faced flak after she blamed the father of the girl for not following traffic rules. "How I wish the girl's father had followed traffic rules, then this accident could have been averted and the little one's life saved," she tweeted.
The victim's father Hanuman Khandelwal countered the allegation saying, "I feel very sad that Hemaji, an MP, has such a small 'soch' (thinking) that she tweeted that I was not following traffic rules. Her Mercedes was speeding above 100 km per hour."
The Special Operation Group (SOG) during the year busted a gang involved in making and selling high-tech "exam cheating kits" in Delhi's posh Green Park area after arresting two persons.
A Japanese tourist was allegedly raped on the Jaipur- Ajmer highway near Jaipur in February for which a tout and his two friends were sentenced to 20 years imprisonment by a local court in September.
Communal tension, arson and violence also gripped Sri
Dungargarh in Bikaner district leading to curfew after clashes between two communities in which three persons were injured over a religious procession passing through a shrine.
Suicide of a Dausa-based farmer Gajendra Singh at an AAP rally in Delhi to address the sufferings of farmers over crop loss because of unseasonal rains shocked the nation. He hanged himself before a large number of people and TV cameras.
Opposition Congress, however, contested police's claim of improvement in the law and order scene.
"Police headquarters data is not acceptable to Congress as sense of insecurity among people of minority community, Dalits, women, SC/ST rose manifold in the past two years of the Raje government," state Congress chief Sachin Pilot told
