Cops hand out safety pins to curb chain snatching

On Tuesday, police at Kancheepuram gave safety pins to women devotees who visited Kancheepuram Varadharaja Perumal temple, and also advised them to cover their neck with sari or dupatta to avoid chain snatching. 

The strategy proved to be effective, as there was no snatching incident reported at the temple during the day. Police decided to take this step after several chain snatching complaints were reported at a temple in Somangalam last week. 

At least 21 sovereigns of gold were snatched from women devotees from there. Varadharaja temple has many devotees, most of them women, coming from across the state to attend Garuda sevai. Police beefed up safety precautions and deployed a good number of women police personnel, but it perhaps was the safety pins that did the trick.

Recently, the City Police had also used the same strategy to prevent such crimes. 

The most successful among them was at Kapaleeswarar Temple at Mylapore, which attracts hundreds during the Panguni Uthram festival. Every year, there are about 50 chain snatching cases reported during the festival. 

This year, after the police distributed thousands of safety pins to women and requested them to pin their gold chains to the sari, the number of incidents dropped to less than 10.