2017 was a busy year for Delhi Police

2017 was no different from previous years as far as crime in the national capital was concerned with several shocking incidents of rape, murder and snatching reported, though the Delhi Police tried to paint a rosy picture by claiming crime reduced considerably.
The year 2017 began on an unpleasant note for Delhi Police. A video of a mob running amok and attacking policemen with stones in Mukherjee Nagar after they prevented two men from assaulting a woman on New Year eve surfaced raising serious questions over the safety of women in the capital.
The incident was eerily similar to the one in Bengaluru which reported mass molestation of women by wayward revellers around the same time. Despite questioning over 300 students and other efforts, the Delhi Police failed to nab the accused.

Even as the nation continued to express its outrage over such incidents, a "prank" video posted on YouTube uploaded by one "Crazy Sumit" in which a youth tried to kiss women randomly invited criticism and prompted Delhi Police to start an investigation into the matter.
The YouTuber and his friend were detained but no case was made out after it emerged that the video was shot with the consent of the women.
In the same month, the city police got a new chief in Amulya Kumar Patnaik as its then commissioner Alok Kumar Verma, was appointed as the CBI director.

Crime against women and children continued to be a concern as some cases stunned the investigators, including one in which a four-year-old boy was booked for raping his classmate in Dwarka.

From January till November 30 last year, 1,968 cases of rape were reported in the national capital. This was a minor decline from last year in which 1992 cases were reported during the same time period.
In February, a replica of the Nobel Peace Prize and its citation awarded to child rights activist Kailash Satyarthi were stolen from his residence. The miscreants were later arrested and the replica recovered but the citation could be found only after a month.

February also witnessed large-scale violence between members of the AISA and the ABVP in Ramjas College. The genesis of the clash was an invite to JNU students Umar Khalid and Shehla Rashid to address a seminar on 'Culture of Protests', which was withdrawn by the college authorities following opposition by ABVP.
While the national capital saw several cases of rape, murder, snatching, motor vehicle theft, etc, statistics showed some decline in all the departments.
For instance, the police statistics claimed that molestation incidents had declined by 19.36 per cent even as there was an increase in the percentage of arrests made in such cases.

Be it the case of Ukrainian Ambassador Igor Polikha or India's first secretary in the Permanent Mission of India to the UN Eenam Gambhir, who both became victims of cell phone snatchers, street crimes continued to trouble the police.
The police statistics claimed that 7,669 cases of snatching were reported in 2017 till November 15, a decline from the previous year's number which stood at 8,428 in the same period.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's creaky blue Wagon R car that was used by him till the 2015 assembly election and which had helped cement his position as the "aam aadmi" was also stolen from outside the Delhi Secretariat in October and was later found abandoned in Ghaziabad.

The elite Special Cell had some big catches to its name including Sonu Dariyapur, who had earned the tag of being "Delhi's most wanted criminal".
In June, the cell also arrested an aide of mob boss Dawood Ibrahim's confidant Chhota Shakeel, who was allegedly planning to kill Pakistan-born Canadian writer Tarek Fatah.
The anti-terror unit then arrested a Bangladeshi-origin suspected al-Qaeda operative, who had come to India to allegedly train and radicalise Rohingyas for fighting the Myanmarese Army in September.
The unit also arrested Sukesh Chandrasekhar, a middleman, in April for allegedly taking money from AIADMK (Amma) leader TTV Dhinakaran to bribe EC officials in connection with the dispute over the AIADMK poll symbol -- 'two leaves'.

Dhinakaran and his aide were also subsequently arrested in connection with the case.
The police may pat its back for the decrease in the number of cases registered under various heads, but several cases remained unsolved.
Incidents of braid chopping were reported from Rohini, Mangolpuri, outer Delhi's Kanganheri village, Kanjhawla, etc, and created a mass hysteria. While cases were registered in the incidents, the mystery barber was never nabbed.
Delhi Police was also caught on the wrong foot, courtesy some of its personnel who got embroiled in controversies.
In October, visuals surfaced showing controversial self- styled godwoman Radhe Maa sitting on an SHO's chair at a police station and swaying with policemen at a Ram Lila function here, forcing an embarrassed Delhi Police to order an inquiry into the incidents.

The police were again left embarrassed after it emerged that some police personnel allowed Sukesh Chandrasekhar, accused in the Election Commission bribery case, to shop in a Bengaluru mall, where he had been taken for a court hearing.
Many shocking cases of child rapes were reported this year.
In January, a 38-year-old man was arrested for allegedly trapping and sexually assaulting school girls after telling them that he had been sent by their parents for giving them some items in east Delhi's New Ashok Nagar.
In September, a 54-year-old British national was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting three visually-impaired minor inmates of the National Association for the Blind in south Delhi's R K Puram.

In the same month, a five-year-old girl was allegedly raped by a peon inside the premises of a private school in Gandhi Nagar area of Shahdara.
The Anti-Corruption Branch, which till 2016, was involved in a tussle with the AAP dispensation over registration of cases and questioning of AAP ministers and MLAs, had a relatively quiet year.
It also got a new chief in Arvind Deep after Mukesh Kumar Meena, who had several run-ins with the Delhi government and was investigating sensitive cases pertaining to scams in the government was transferred to Mizoram.