A series of alleged sexual assault, stalking and harassment cases involving women and minor girls across Delhi this September has renewed scrutiny of the Capital’s public-safety system. The incidents occurred in a tailoring shop, a residential neighbourhood, an open area, a large public park and roads near educational and transport hubs. The cases are separate. But taken together, they raise a larger question: how effectively do policing, lighting, surveillance, public transport and the criminal justice system protect women and children in the city?
A month of warning signs
The most serious among recent cases was reported on September 21, when three men, posing as policemen, sexually assaulted a 17-year-old girl at the Aastha Kunj Park near the Kalkaji Temple. Police arrested all three accused, including one after an exchange of fire. The survivor’s male friend had made the emergency call, and an FIR was registered under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POSCO) Act.
According to a police account reported after the incident, the girl and her friend had entered the park at about 7.30 pm, and the PCR call was made around 8.45 pm. The interval does not, by itself, establish a failure of emergency response. But it highlights a metric that is rarely available in public discussions of women’s safety: the time between the beginning of an incident, the emergency call and the police response.
The physical vulnerabilities at Aastha Kunj were stark. An inspection found no CCTV cameras inside the park, non-functional cameras at some gates and a guard cabin near the site without electricity. The park has 29 gates spread across roughly 142 acres, making surveillance and access control difficult. Lady Shri Ram College for Women, located close to the park, shifted classes online for a day. It resumed offline classes on September 25 and announced a student security council to work with the administration and police.
The incident prompted Delhi Police Commissioner Anurag Kumar to order a city-wide review of poorly lit stretches, broken CCTV cameras and other safety gaps in parks, roads and isolated areas. Lieutenant-Governor Taranjit Singh Sandhu directed the Delhi Police, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) to conduct a comprehensive audit of parks, including lighting, security, cleanliness and patrolling. By September 25, the Delhi Police had inspected around 1,500 parks, including about 300 prominent or large ones.
They used 11 parameters for the review: previous crimes, area, maintenance agency, timings, visitors, gates, guards, lighting, CCTV camera coverage, dark spots and boundary walls. The findings suggested that Aastha Kunj was not an isolated case of failure. The Swarn Jayanti Park in Rohini, spread over 170 acres, had 27 guards and lighting, but insufficient illumination and inadequate CCTV coverage.
A 100-acre DDA park in Avantika had guards and lights but no CCTV and a dark spot. A 16-acre park in IP Estate had guards and lighting but no cameras. A 90-hectare MCD park in Mandawali had guards and what was described as good lighting, but no CCTV. Nehru Park, under the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC), had six gates, guards, lighting and 12 cameras and met all parameters examined.
It is no longer simply whether individual parks have safety deficiencies, but how many do, which agency must fix them and whether repairs will be tracked to completion. Other cases reported this month occurred in very different settings. On September 10, a 17-year-old girl in Swaroop Nagar was sexually assaulted and later killed; police arrested four people, including three juveniles.
On September 17, a Class VI girl was allegedly lured into a tailoring shop in Sadar Bazar and sexually assaulted; the 56-year-old shopkeeper was arrested. On September 21, a seven-year-old girl was allegedly sexually assaulted in the Desh Bandhu Gupta Road area.
In Saket, a 21-year-old woman alleged that two motorcycle-borne men chased and harassed her near the Panchsheel Park metro station on the intervening night of September 11 and 12. On September 23, two Delhi University students alleged that four men in an SUV stalked and harassed them near the Hakikat Park in Mukherjee Nagar.
Another case involved a six-year-old girl in Kishanganj who was allegedly sexually assaulted; residents reportedly caught and assaulted the accused before police intervened. The locations included a market, a shop, residential streets, a park, an open area, a university neighbourhood and a metro approach road. The alleged offenders were not always strangers. These cases therefore expose the limits of treating women’s safety as a problem of isolated public spaces or stranger violence alone.
National crime data reinforce that caution. Delhi Police figures provided in Parliament show 13,208 crimes against women registered in 2023, 13,195 in 2024 and 12,458 in 2025. Crimes against children declined from 7,769 to 7,636 and then 7,413. NCRB data, using a different metropolitan-city dataset, recorded 13,396 crimes against women in Delhi in 2024—the highest absolute number among the 19 metropolitan cities covered.
These figures are not interchangeable. The registered cases reflect both the incidence of crime and the likelihood that victims approach the police and that cases are registered. A fall may indicate lower incidence, changed reporting behaviour or registration practices. A high figure may reflect both greater violence and better reporting.
The cases also show why child safety cannot be confined to parks. Children move through shops, neighbourhoods, schools, transport routes and open spaces, often without continuous adult supervision. The need for a credible safety strategy to cover the entire environment is, therefore, felt.
Safety ends where journey starts
For a woman travelling after dark, safety is not located at a single metro station, bus terminal or destination. It is experienced across the whole journey. A station may have CCTV cameras, guards and controlled entry. But the next stretch may involve an unlit lane, a broken footpath, a vacant plot, an informal vehicle or a deserted service road.
The Delhi Police operates the 112 emergency response system around the clock and lists 1091 as the helpline for women in distress. But the existence of a helpline says little about how quickly help reaches different parts of the city. Publishing median emergency response times, the slowest responses, night-time performance and the distribution of PCR vehicles, patrols & police pickets could help.
The same principle applies to public transport. The last 500 metres may involve waiting for an auto, crossing a service road or walking past a poorly lit park. Bus-stop lighting, night services, pedestrian crossings, continuous footpaths and access to autos and e-rickshaws are all part of the safety system.
The responsibility is divided among agencies, but women’s journeys are not. A single route may cross a road of the Public Works Department (PWD), pass a DDA park, run beside an MCD property and end at a college campus. Each segment may have a different authority for lighting, maintenance, surveillance or security, while policing remains the Delhi Police’s responsibility.
This division creates an accountability gap. A police officer may identify a dangerous dark spot but lack the authority to repair the light. A park may have guards but no functioning cameras. A camera may record an incident but be disconnected from a system that can quickly retrieve footage.
Every vulnerability should, hence, be assigned to a named agency, with the date of complaint, inspection, repair order, completion and independent verification recorded publicly. The relevant question is not merely who is responsible for women’s safety, but who is responsible for each part of the journey.
What courts say
Courts have repeatedly underlined that safety is a condition of women’s freedom, not an optional addition to development.
In February 2025, the Delhi High Court upheld the conviction of a man who sexually harassed a female co-passenger on a public bus. The court said that unless an environment free from harassment and fear was created, discussions about women’s progress remained superficial. It described the right to live and move freely without fear as the foundation of genuine empowerment. The bench also warned against leniency towards those who make public spaces unsafe.
The judgment is significant because the offence occurred in public transport—an everyday setting for mobility. The court’s message was that buses, roads and other shared spaces could not be treated as neutral zones where women must tolerate harassment as the price of moving through the city.
In September 2025, while denying bail to a rape accused, the HC observed that sexual violence against women continued despite the nationwide awakening and legal reforms that followed the Nirbhaya case. It directed the Delhi government to provide security in deserted or isolated areas of hospital buildings that could be misused for rape and sexual assault.
The observations point to the same institutional failure: safety measures concentrate on formal sites while leaving the poorly monitored spaces between them exposed. A building may be secure at its entrance and vulnerable in its rear corridor. Likewise, a college may be protected within its boundary while students face danger on the route home.
Audits and action
The Aastha Kunj case is also a test of whether Delhi can convert informal warnings into documented interventions. Reports indicated that one accused had previously been seen harassing couples and carrying a knife in the park. People had reportedly raised concerns with staff and guards, although formal complaints had not been filed. These accounts do not prove that the later crime could have been prevented. But they do raise questions about whether recurring warnings are recorded, escalated and acted upon.
The park audit could become useful if its findings are made publicly trackable. For every park, Delhi should publish the condition of lights, cameras, gates, guards, boundaries and dark spots, followed by an action-taken record. The same system should cover complaints about harassment, illegal activities and unsafe access. Restricting access after sunset may make large parks easier to monitor.
The DDA has ordered controlled entry in parks with multiple gates, along with additional lighting, CCTV surveillance, guards, night patrols and safety boards. But closing gates is not the same as securing public space. If most entrances are shut while internal paths remain dark, vulnerability may simply shift to the remaining entrance.
CCTV numbers require similar scrutiny. The Delhi government’s 2026-27 Budget allocated Rs 225 crore for operating existing cameras and installing 50,000 more. It also provided Rs 50 crore for smart LED systems on PWD roads and Rs 16 crore for 11 One Stop Centres for women in distress. Delhi PWD has said more than 2.5 lakh cameras are already installed and maintained, with another 50,000 planned.
The more important questions are whether cameras work, where they are located, what proportion of vulnerable sites they cover, who monitors them and how quickly footage can be retrieved. A camera at a gate does not secure a 142-acre park. Installation is not coverage; coverage is not monitoring; monitoring is not response.
Lighting has the same chain of responsibility. On September 21, the NDMC approved a Rs 18.26-crore project involving new poles and underground cabling to address dark spots. But a light matters only if it works, illuminates the route and can be repaired quickly.
Arrests and accountability
Police capacity is another measurable part of the system. As of March 12, 2026, Delhi Police had 14,140 vacancies against a sanctioned strength of 97,331. Of these, 13,958 were at the constable-to-inspector level. There were also 152 vacancies among 346 sanctioned ACP posts.
The vacancies indicate the capacity available for patrols, investigations, emergency response and sustained engagement with vulnerable locations. The meaningful indicators are deployment by area and time, patrol frequency and response performance—not only the number of personnel announced.
The criminal justice chain extends beyond arrest. Delhi has approved 427 ancillary posts for 53 fast-track special courts at an estimated cost of about `37 crore. The Department of Justice’s dashboard records 2,311 cases pending in Delhi’s exclusive POCSO courts.
The September cases have produced audits, patrols, access restrictions and new instructions. The test now is whether these measures survive beyond the news cycle.
Tales of dread this month
Horror in the park
On September 21, a 17-year-old girl celebrating her birthday was gang-raped by three men who posed as police personnel to intimidate her and her male friend inside Aastha Kunj Park near Kalkaji Mandir. All three accused were arrested following a police operation.
Raped and dumped
A 16-year-old girl was brutally gang-raped and repeatedly stabbed after going to meet an acquaintance in North Delhi’s Swaroop Nagar. Four individuals, including three juveniles, were apprehended by the police after her remains were found dumped in a field on September 13.
Unsafe at night
A minor girl who had stepped out on the night of September 16 was lured into a tailor to his local shop and sexually assaulted after being physically restrained. The 56-year-old tailor was swiftly tracked down and arrested under the POCSO Act.
Abuse in school cab
A four-year-old girl disclosed to her family that she had been sexually abused by her school-cab driver in West Delhi’s Ranhola area. Police registered a case under the POCSO Act after the matter came to light around September 10 and launched a manhunt to apprehend the absconding driver.
Abducted while asleep
A nine-year-old girl was abducted while asleep at home and sexually assaulted by a 40-year-old neighbour in Swaroop Nagar. The accused was arrested following immediate complaints lodged by the victim’s family, police said on September 13.
Boy sexually abused
A seven-year-old boy was subjected to sexual abuse by a middle-aged man in early September in West Delhi’s Nihal Vihar locality. The local police registered a stringent POCSO case and took the accused neighbor into custody.