NEW DELHI:Though the Delhi Police got Rs 5,027.98 crore—an increase of Rs 374.79 crore—from the last budget allocation of Rs 4,653.19 crore to spruce up training to provide better security to residents, especially women, nothing has taken off. Contrary to Delhi Police’s tall claims that women security is their prime concern, it is well-known that a huge segment of them are engaged in VIP duty.
LOPSIDED PRIORITIES: Last month, the Delhi High Court rapped the Central government for not providing enough security to women and ordered that CCTVs be installed in the capital to ensure security for women. The court rapped the government for hiring 15,000 CCTV cameras in record time when US President Barack Obama was in town, but not for guarding women. There are also numerous instances of the police being chastised by the judiciary over their lackadaisical attitude towards providing adequate security to women and girls in the city.
Ironically, one of the poll promises AAP made during the Delhi Assembly poll campaign was to install 1.5 lakh CCTV cameras across the city to ensure safety of women. After coming to power, AAP leader Sanjay Singh was quoted saying, “we never said that we will install 1.5 lakhs cameras”.
MEASURES BY MEASURE: Delhi Police claims they are prioritizing women’s safety on a war footing. Special Commissioner of Police Deepak Mishra said the force is taking all necessary measures to put a stop to crimes against women. “We have installed 3,932 CCTV cameras at 85 locations including border check posts and the courts. There is a proposal under Safe City Project to install 9,196 cameras at 133 locations including 6,625 cameras,” Mishra said.
The officer said security audit of 405 paying guest accommodation hostels has been done. 255 vulnerable routes are under watch. Women officers are being deployed in 100 PCR vans. “We imparted self-defence training to 15,583 girls in 2014 and various community policing programmes are operational,” said the officer.
Detailed plans to install CCTV cameras in all buses were drawn up by cops. But so far they have managed to install cameras in only 200 buses. There were plans to install GPS monitoring system in all public transport buses and autorickshaws but these remain on paper. However, GPS machines have been installed in all new autorickshaws but the city administration lacks a control room to monitor the vehicles. It’s a similar situation with DTC buses; GPS have been installed but there is no control room to coordinate movements. The Delhi government has only 186 transport officials to check and monitor the 85 lakh vehicles registered in Delhi.
Immediately after the massive protests over the Nirbhaya incident, the 181 help-line for women in distress was set up. It recently crossed 10 lakh phone calls. Despite each employee spending 474 minutes of the 480 minutes of each eight-hour shift, they have been able to take only 70 per cent of the total calls made to the centre every day. The sanctioned strength of PCR vans in Delhi is 1,000, of which around 150 are diverted to VIP security. 193 vehicles have been condemned as obsolete, but the request to replace them is pending with the Home Ministry. So, the police is left with only around 657 PCR vans to attend to the 73 lakh distress they receive each year.
This has seriously handicapped Delhi Police’s efficiency. On February 26, 14-year-old schoolgirl Khushboo left for her school, which is three kilometres from her Nihal Vihar home in West Delhi at 12: 45 am. Her elder brother Amit was escorting her. After walking a kilometre or so, Khushboo met four of her classmates. She joined them and asked Amit to return home. “She had to appear for her Class VII annual examination at 1: 30, ” said her father Subodh Kamthi. They expected her to be back by 6 pm. But she did not return. “We went to her school and the homes of her friends, but no one had a clue as to where she was.” Her parents spent entire night contacting friends and relatives but in vain. They then went to Nihal Vihar Police and registered a missing complaint on February 27. “The police have registered a case of kidnapping and we have knocked on the doors of the police station almost eight times by now, but their reply is always the same—“We are probing and will trace you daughter, ” said Subodh. Experts and criminologists have been debating why crimes against women continue to increase nationally and in Delhi, but nobody has a definitive answer. Nimesh Desai, Head of the Department of Psychiatry and the Medical Superintendent at the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences, says, “The reason behind crime against women is the century-old gender power structure that we have not only in India but other places as well.”
He added that the main reason is that stringent laws that look good on paper are not being implemented. Until then, the streets, buses, taxis and bus stops will remain haunted by the shadow of fear for the 7,800,615 women who live in one of the most security dense cities in the world.
REGISTERING A KIDNAPPING CASE
After anyone goes to police station to register a complaint of kidnapping, the police first check whether the victim’s parents or relatives have got any ransom call or not. When the police is satisfied that it not a ransom-cum-kidnapping case, they register a missing complaint, make a daily diary entry and seeks all the details of the victim such as a photo, height and body marks. After lapse of 24 hours, the police convert the missing complaint into abduction case and upload all the details on an intranet network—Zonal Integrated Police Network (Zipnet)—which is shared by six states—Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Thereafter, pamphlets about the victim are distributed at all police stations, bus intersections, and hospital and markets.