NEW DELHI: An investigation by The Sunday Standard reveals that the most vulnerable areas for women in the capital are the tony New Delhi and South Delhi areas.
On January 14, a Danish woman was raped by eight vagabonds at State Entry Road near Connaught Place. In South Delhi, Press Enclave Road, Kalka Dass Marg near Qutub Minar, Lodhi Road, Nelson Mandela Marg and Vasant Marg, Mahipalpur and Vasant Kunj are deemed dangerous for women at night. The forested, unlit route along the Jawaharla Nehru University (JNU) and its rocky precincts overgrown with trees and bushes is one of the most unsafe spots for women, according to the report. On June 12, a 36-year-old woman was gangraped by three men in a moving car in Vasant Kunj area near JNU at around 10 pm.
As per a government analysis, there are 16 vulnerable routes in Outer Delhi, six in the North West, 46 in the heart of the city, 14 in central parts of the city, 27 in North Delhi, 46 in the South, 27 in West Delhi, 22 in the South West district, 31 in the East District, 13 in th South East and six in North East Delhi. In Uber rape case, the victim was sexually assaulted in a dark isolated road outside a garbage dump near drain on Najafgarh Road. The December 16 brutal gangrape incident took place in the Mahipalpur area.
“We have increased deployment of forces in these areas and have also have intensified patrolling,” Special Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) Deepak Mishra told The Sunday Standard. He also said that the police have laid out detailed instructions for patrolling in crime-prone areas like New Delhi, Outer Delhi, North East and South West districts.
“Policemen are being extensively trained before they go out on patrol. The training includes mock ups of real-life situations where police are required to confront and corner criminals,” said Mishra.
The absence of proper lighting had come into focus during the probe into the Nirbhaya rape case and Delhi Police identified many unlit places as ‘Dark Spots’ for special attention. However, on an average, on any given night in Delhi, there are around 2,000 Dark Spots where there are no streetlights, or they are not working. On Friday, there were 2,264 Dark Spots across the city. In the New Delhi area, there were 110 Dark Spots, in Central Delhi 29, in North Delhi 95, in South East 247, in East 312, in North East 364, in North West 93, in Outer Delhi 75, in South West 479, in South Delhi 379 and in West Delhi 81. Of the 2,264 Dark Spots, 930 are also unlit stretches of road without streetlights.
A committee was formed after the Nirbhaya case, where the Delhi Police was tasked to identify and prepare a report on Dark Spots where no streetlights exist, along with other vulnerable spots and send it to the state government. Delhi government agencies were asked by the police to install lampposts at those spots. But these largely remain on paper.
“Each PCR van has been allotted specific areas where they have to patrol and identify unlit and Dark Spots every day,” said Special Commissioner of Police (Operations) Sunderi Nanda.
A daily report on the conditions of these Dark Spots is sent to the PWD. Sometimes, non-functional streetlights are repaired, but more often than not, they remain unlit. There are no streetlights on 930 dark stretches, which have been identified as crime prone areas. “We get little assistance from the city government,” said another police officer.
State government officials say they don’t have enough manpower to audit every streetlight, or the funds to install new streetlights.
Police officers say that as a result they have to redeploy patrolling staff and man pickets every week.
In Delhi, the police registers around 40 cases of crime against women, including four cases of rape, every day. A total of 1,932 rape cases have been registered across all police stations this year until November 25. Around 35 rapes took place in moving cars. The police have registered 13,230 cases of crime against women till November 15 as against 11,479 cases in 2013—an increase of 15.25 per cent. Till last month, 17,276 IPC cases were registered in East Delhi, 15,678 in the North East district, 15,690 cases in South Delhi, 16,978 cases in West Delhi, 10,446 cases in the South West district, 7,782 cases in Central district, 7,676 cases in the North district, 12,070 cases in the North West district and 19,002 cases in Outer Delhi. In Lutyens’ Delhi alone, 2,156 cases have been registered.
As the safety of women lie shacked in red tape, Delhi where over seven lakh women work remains a city of fear.
Public Transport
Tall claims were made by the city administration to revamp the public transport system but their implantation has been a concern. More than 46 lakh people use buses every day in Delhi. The city, as per a 2001 Supreme Court order, required 11,000 buses, including the DTC- and Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transit System (DIMTS)-run cluster buses. But till now around 6,000 buses have been made available. DTC has been able to ply 5,216 buses which further have got reduced to 4,937 and DIMTS runs around 1,200, but these numbers are woefully short for the city. There were plans to install CCTV cameras in all the buses but only 200 of them have so far got these. Three CCTV cameras with a seven-hour recording capacity have been installed in each bus which happened only last month. This was the first phase of the project, and in the second phase, more buses will be included, said DTC spokesperson R S Minhas.
GPS
Plans were laid out to install GPS in all public transport buses as well as autorickshaws but these still remain on paper. GPS machines have been installed in new autorickshaws but there is no control room with the transport department to link the machine. Similar is the case with DTC buses—GPS has been installed but no control room to monitor it.
181
The 181 helpline handling calls of women in distress, children and elderly citizens, which recently crossed 10 lakh phone calls figure, is also in a peculiar situation. Despite each of its employees spending 474 minutes of the 480 minutes in each eight-hour shift in attending to telephone calls, the under-staffed helpline service has been able to attend to only 70 per cent of the total calls made to the centre every day. The helpline could answer 7,00,984 calls and had to abandon 3,13,484 calls from December 31, 2012 till September this year. The 24 x7 helpline, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Women and Child Development Department of the city administration, has a team of 16 women to handle calls from the distressed. Repeated appeals by the helpline desk to the government to increase its staff have fallen on deaf ears.
PCR Vans
The 8,500-personnel PCR is one of the biggest units of the Delhi Police. The sanctioned strength of PCR vans is 1,000—of which around 150 are diverted to VIP security and 193 vehicles are condemned, the request to replace these is pending with the home ministry. So, the police are left with around 657 PCR vans to attend to distress calls, and they get a total of 73 lakh calls a year, which makes it nearly 11,000 calls a year each. This comes to about 30 calls a day per van. Even if the PCR van personnel take about an hour to attend to each call, they will still not be able to attend to every SOS that comes their way. This apart, they have to audit street lights, make a report and submit it to various municipal corporations under whose supervision the streets and roads fall. They have also been assigned to check parks, gardens, vacant plots and buildings.