In two days, concerned citizens of Delhi will gather at Jantar Mantar in a ritual to mourn Nirbhaya, the victim of the brutal gang rape and murder that happened in a moving bus on a wintry night in December 2012. Yet, the monsters lurking in the dark are real in the nightmares of the city’s women. A young woman was raped last week in an Uber cab while returning home from a party. In Delhi, young girls and women are assaulted and raped in radio taxis, private cars, on the way home at night from work or on lonely, unlit stretches where sexual predators prowl out of sight of police patrols or the random CCTV camera. After the Nirbhaya incident, Delhi Police carried out a crime mapping of places in the city, which are deemed dangerous for women.
The report zeroed in on 274 vulnerable spots and isolated routes, which come under 161 police stations. Instead of taking action, a wrangle on maintenance, funds and patrolling has broken out between the Public Works Department (PWD) and the police, keeping 255 spots at high-risk for women’s safety. In areas like South and North Delhi, which has abundance of trees and shrubbery, it is the PWD’s job to maintain them to prevent overgrowth which could shelter sexual attackers.
The PWD and Delhi’s top police officials have met several times to discuss the issue, to no avail. Police Commissioner B S Bassi has written several times to the city administration to expedite the matter but no action has been taken so far by the state government. Once in a month, police officers meet to discuss the issue, without arriving at any solution. The PWD pleads that their hands are tied and need more time to audit the areas at the ground level. “They keep saying that they do not have the necessary funds, and have to get permission from the city administration to start the process of lighting up the dark spots,” said a senior police officer. PWD officials said their hands are tied since they have already taken up 39 big projects this year and work is in progress on 20 projects sanctioned in the previous years—all worth `5,000 crore. Since the state hasn’t conducted a proper audit of the procedures to be adopted, even an estimation of the funds needed hasn’t happened.
So far, only 19 vulnerable and isolated spots have been addressed, although, Home Minister Rajnath Singh admitted last week that the Delhi Police has increased security in the 255 isolated locations. An investigation by The Sunday Standard reveals that the most vulnerable areas for women are New Delhi and South Delhi areas. These even include the area behind 7 Race Course Road, home to India’s prime minister; Kautilya Marg, Panchsheel Marg and Vinay Marg in highly protected Lutyens’ Delhi, where MPs, ministers, bureaucrats, cops and some judges live. Delhi Police has identified 46 vulnerable routes for women that include Tughlak Road, Aurangzeb Road, Safdarjung Road, Niti Marg, Tolstoy Road and Pandara Road.
Apart from where the rulers of the country live, even Delhi’s diplomatic enclave is unsafe for the fair sex. There is heavy deployment of police squads in Shanti Path, which houses embassies and high commissions because of terror threats. The roads are wide and lined with trees, the colonies are full of parks and the large Nehru Park is empty at night, except for the occasional watchmen and the denizens of the night. On February 13, a 19-year-old fashion design student was raped in a lane off Shanti Path. On July 3, a foreign woman had allegedly said that she was gangraped and robbed in the Chanakyapuri area. Similarly, according to the report, South
Avenue, where parliamentarians reside, is considered a vulnerable spot for women and girls during the night hours.