TNN

Shimla, Nov 20: The picturesque hill station of Shimla is increasingly being shadowed by incidents of crime involving tourists. Death of a women tourist in a hotel in Lakkar Bazaar on Sunday November 18, has further strengthened the credence that hotels of this famous summer resort have become hot spots for crime.

In the last five years there have been as many as nine murders, not to mention the murder of Padmesh, cousin sister of former Punjab CM Amarinder Singh who was shot at point blank range in Punjab guest house here, by the person who was accompanying her. However, he was arrested near Solan while making good his escape in the car in which they had come here to holiday.

According to police records, there have been over 120 cases of various crimes, which include suicide, murder and rape, in hotels and guest houses in Shimla. The fact that a large number of honeymoon couples are not really husband and wives but lovers posing as one, is revealed by the fact that most of the addresses given by the couples in hotel registers are fictituous.

As a hotelier here sent over 1,000 invitations to honeymooning couples who had registered at his hotel to come again, offering a discount, he found that over 80% of the letters came back with the note addresseed ‘not found’.

The police here claim that they have time and again being requesting hoteliers to install video cameras above the reception so that all could be photographed, but this has not been done at most of the hotels and also the practice of identifying the genuinity of tourists through identification papers is not being done.

However, Ajit Butail, state council member for tourism and a hotelier himself, said that a tourist state and a police state cannot co-exist. ‘‘It is not possible to police the tourist and such incidents can occur anywhere in the world,” he added.