Court says robbery on rise, upholds convict's jail term

Incidents of robbery at public places are gradually rising with unscrupulous persons finding women a soft target, a Delhi court has observed while upholding the jail term of a man in a robbery case.
The court made the observations while dismissing an appeal of a convict against the three-year jail term awarded to him by a magisterial court for robbing a woman of her purse near a temple in south Delhi in 2015.
"Incidents of robbery and theft at public places are gradually rising in the society. Such offenders need to be given stringent punishment so that such offences are not repeated in future.

"As per the complainant, he was following her from a distance. Such unscrupulous persons like the appellant find women as their soft target," Additional Sessions Judge R K Tripathi said while refusing to interfere with the 2016 order of the metropolitan magistrate (MM).
"The punishment awarded to appellant (convict) by the MM is just and adequate. No ground to interfere in the sentence awarded to him is made out. I do not find any merit in the appeal preferred by appellant," the judge said.
According to the prosecution, on December 27, 2015 at 10 PM, Laxman snatched the purse of the woman near Lajpat Nagar here. While he was running away, the woman shouted and soon passers-by caught him and handed him over to the police.

He was booked for the offence under section 392 (robbery) of the IPC and was sent to three years in jail by a trial court in August 2016.
The youth had pleaded innocence and claimed he was falsely implicated.