Job cuts amid Covid give rise to crop of first-time criminals

The details of case number 99/22 filed at Safdarjung Enclave police station reads how a security officer of a cash management firm spotted a young man tampering with an HDFC bank ATM on the night of February 11 last year near Green Park. The complaint includes details of how the alleged thief attempted to pry open the ATM by using a screwdriver and a pair of pliers.

But missing in police records are details of how and why he took to crime that night.

Deepak Ram, 21, who worked as a cook in Chittoor in Andhra Pradesh, had lost his job because of the nationwide lockdown to restrict the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. In January 2021, the Andhra eatery had shut, forcing Ram to return home. But there were no jobs back home in Uttarakhand.

Ram returned to Delhi and stayed at a friend’s house. On the evening of February 11, he bought a pair of pliers and a screwdriver from a hardware store in south Delhi, and attempted to steal money from the ATM. He thought he would return home with the heist and never look back. But Ram, a man with no prior criminal record, was arrested within an hour that night.

The stories of at least 70 men and women arrested in the past two years since the pandemic began are similar to Ram’s story. They too lost their jobs because of the lockdown and took to crime.

Factory workers, managers in software companies, restaurant employees, help at shops in Delhi’s markets, the police have arrested at least 70 people with no prior record, who turned to crime after losing jobs during the pandemic.

To be sure, these cases of arrests since March 25, 2020 (the first day of lockdown), are only those documented or confirmed by police. The actual numbers could be much higher.

The details of the crimes also showed how they took to burglary, snatching, robbery, cyber fraud or work as drug mules.

Consider this: on November 11, 2020, two men, Pawan Lama and Vinod Lama, were arrested while delivering 300 grams of hashish to a contact in south Delhi’s Amar Colony. Until the 2020 lockdown, Pawan was a tattoo artist in Lajpat Nagar, while Vinod worked as a bartender at a restaurant in Connaught Police. Both had lost jobs during the lockdown.

The details of what the two men did immediately after losing their jobs in August 2021 are unclear, but police confirmed that Pawan was roped into the drug trade by a client who visited his tattoo studio before the lockdown. Police in their case report mentioned that the two were paid ₹1,500-2,000 to deliver each consignment.

“There are many people like these two, who took to smuggling drugs or illicit liquor. In many cases, we realised that the people we caught had not even told their families back home about losing their jobs during the lockdown. They were mostly migrants like these two,” said a police officer from the Lajpat Nagar station.

“We came across so many cases at our police station. Most of them requested us not to tell their families at home about their crimes.”

While the impact of the pandemic was felt across the country in three distinct waves, the national capital saw it particularly harshly. Delhi experienced four punishing waves of Covid-19 in 2020 and 2021. This prompted the state’s disaster management authority to shut businesses multiple times through the two years.

“The losses caused by the lockdown are incalculable. In Connaught Place alone, about 25% of eateries were forced to shut shop. Some of us still paid employees at least half their salary, but many could not sustain the losses and left the market,” said Atul Bhargava, president of New Delhi Traders Association, an industry group. “In many countries, their government helped traders by paying the rent, getting it reduced or supporting them financially. There was no such provision here.”

“In other smaller markets and factories, the number of people who lost their jobs could be in thousands,” Bhargava said. “Restaurants and bars were the most affected. They were also the last to open after curbs were removed.”

Snatching and theft

An analysis of the cases showed that a majority of the people took to snatching after losing their jobs. Snatching remains the most common street crime in the Capital city. Even today, the Delhi Police control room receives six reported incidents of snatching every hour. It wasn’t just people from lower-income groups, or those working in the unorganised sector, who turned snatchers after losing jobs.

Among those who took to snatching were Hardik Arya, 23, and Sonu Kumar, 23. Arya, an MBA graduate, worked as a manager with a blue-chip software company, and Kumar, a graduate, was a senior operator at a private company that specialised in making audio and video conferencing equipment.

Within three months of losing their jobs, the two used their motorcycle to snatch valuables from citizens on the road.

Between December 2020, and May 12, 2021, the two men committed the crime three times in Lajpat Nagar. They were arrested while attempting the third time, when they snatched a Romanian national’s bag in May 2021.

“The number of undocumented cases could be more. Snatching and burglary will be the first crime that people in Delhi take when they go to the other side of the law,” said retired IPS officer Ashok Chand, who worked in Delhi police for over three decades and headed the crime branch and special cell. “Such people commit crimes out of desperation. Snatching has become so common that most people think they will be able to pull it off easily.”

But not everyone could snatch or rob to make up for the losses of living without a job. There was 50-year-old Nagina Begum, who worked as a maid at a house in Lajpat Nagar. Sometime in March-April 2020, after the lockdown was announced, she lost her job. Four months later her husband left her.

Begum, who had no prior criminal record, met a man in Nizamuddin, who offered her ₹200 to deliver a consignment of heroin, police said. She agreed.

On one such trip on October 4, to earn the measly ₹200, she was on her way to deliver drugs but was apprehended by police in the morning. She was arrested after 11 grams of heroin was found in a pouch she was carrying.