In Dakshinpuri, a south Delhi residential area, people clam up when you mention the name Sanjeev Kumar. The articulate matriculate owns two tiny clothing and hardware shops here. He also runs a gang of 40, has a wife at a home adorned with huge stereo speakers and crystalware and is fond of a "wine and women" life. An also-ran politician, he polled 34 votes in November's assembly elections.

Kumar, 25, was on the Delhi Police's most wanted list of robbers till he was arrested last week for the eighth time trying to fleece joggers and walkers at knifepoint in south Delhi's Jahanpanah Park. That just means a temporary stop to his daily income of Rs 15,000; the police say he will be out on bail soon. "A new class of criminals is strutting the streets of Delhi more defiantly than before," says Joint Commissioner of Police Amod Kanth.

A detailed Delhi Police survey of the cases, made available exclusively to MT, shows a trend that is disturbing. Till December 21, 1998, the police arrested a record 1,355 robbers, Kumar included. But unlike Kumar 90 per cent of them were first-timers to crime. A similar proportion were below 30 years, a third from middle-class background and almost 40 per cent were school educated. Each one of these segments has registered a steady increase over the past four years -- the scope of the survey.

Earlier, half the robberies were committed with brute physical force, singly or in a gang. Now, two-thirds of all robberies are done with a knife, a gun or a country pistol. Anything comes in handy: razors, button knives, sharpened screwdrivers, hockey sticks, even chilli powder. Like never before, young, desperate men are attacking people everywhere: inside moving buses, in teeming theatres, at lonely parks and at weddings. Says Ameeta Parsuram, psychology teacher at Jesus and Mary College: "The young are chasing a lifestyle that is so far out of reach that to grab it they need to do something socially unacceptable, like rob."

Police Commissioner V.N. Singh tries to explain away this phenomenon by tying together some disparate threads. He says this past year the real estate construction and brokerage business in the Delhi region saw an unprecedented slump. The lifting of prohibition in Haryana meant that many goons went out of business and concentrated on Delhi. There were also more registration of complaints which added to the crime graph. Much of this, admit police officials off-the-record, is because the force had previously hesitated from registering more cases to avoid flak from the media and the political leadership. The result is that a growing number of criminals are allowed to go scot free.

Now, most robberies are committed in broad daylight. And robbers, quite often, turn killers. Like Sameer "Sonu" Kapoor, 21, killer of two. He had girlfriends eating out of his hand. They found his smooth talk and flashy lifestyle a heady mix. He swaggered into snooker clubs, loved Jacuzzis and visited swanky bars regularly. Only problem was Sonu hid his humble, troubled background; his parents landed in India as refugees from Afghanistan six years ago. Now a police case study, Sonu was arrested in the second week of August by the west district police along with two accomplices for looting Rs 4.5 lakh and jewellery after killing two women in their Rajouri Garden house. Both his accomplices, Amit Chugh, 18, aka Mota, and Amit "Micky" Kapoor, 22, belong to well-to-do business families. Both of them, however, share the same weaknesses as Sonu's cellular phone had the names and numbers of 15 girlfriends and prostitutes.

They needed money, a lot, and fast. That led them to the house of their friend Rajiv Gakkhar. Rajiv wasn't around, his mother and sister were. In June, Rajiv had surreptitiously stolen Rs 1.3 lakh from his own house and to impress his friends bought himself a second-hand Maruti car. Inside the house, Sonu, Mota and Micky pretended that they knew who had stolen the cash. As soon as water had been served, they swooped on the two women, first brutally stabbing them and then strangling them with electric cords. The house was then burgled and set on fire.

The nonchalance with which such crimes are committed troubles Avdhesh Sharma, a doctor who works closely with the Delhi Police on such cases. "Those with a criminal mind see the snail-like progress of justice and are emboldened to do what they want," he says. "Also, young men in Delhi constantly hear their parents who have the karva denge, ho jayega attitude. The message that goes out to these young minds is that their work must be done, if not by hook, then by crook." The chill this winter isn't all about the weather.

-- Sayantan Chakravarty