Very little has changed in the national Capital after the Nirbhaya gangrape on December 16, 2012. The data of the Delhi Police reveals the cases of rape have increased manifold since then, soaring from 706 in 2012 to 2,053 in 2015. Besides, the criminal law amendment-2013 has failed to deter rapists and sexual offenders. All told, the Delhi Police redeemed itself by working out 1,593 cases while 943 of these cases were worked only within a week of FIRs being registered.
“In the rape cases, police had arrested 1,593 accused persons and filed chargesheets in 60 per cent of rape cases in 30 days and filed chargesheets in 40 per cent cases within 90 days,” said the Delhi Police spokesperson Rajan Bhagat.
Similarly, in 3,268 cases of molestation out of total of 5,027 were worked out. 774 cases of insult to modesty of women and 60 cases under POCSO were worked out by police. Total 1,405 and 79 cases were registered this year for insult to modesty of women and POCSO respectively.
It also emerged out from data that in maximum cases, the accused were known to the victim. In 1,593 cases of rapes 77.5 per cent of the accused were relatives, friends and acquaintances of the victim. Besides, 15.96 per cent were neighbours, 2.69 per cent employers or co-workers and only 3.59 per cent were strangers respectively. The profiling of accused that showed maximum number of accused were illiterate (45.96 per cent); between the age of 18-25 years (51.24 per cent) and whose social status was poor (60.96 per cent). The data revealed that 84.94 per cent of rape incidents took place in house or jhuggi (84.94 per cent), while 3.34 per cent rape cases took place in restaurants or hotels. In rape cases that were registered between January 1 and November 30, maximum number of them were registered in North East Delhi’s Khajoori Khas (39 cases) followed by 38 in Mehrauli of South West Delhi and Aman Vihar of Outer Delhi. Besides, 37, 36, 35 and 33 rape cases were registered in Dabri area, Malviya Nagar, Shahbad Dairy and Govind Puri respectively.
Delhi Police senior official said, “Security of women is a sensitive issue and officers of the Delhi Police are always on their toes to control it. Several initiatives have been taken. Help-line dedicated to women security functions 24x7. The Himmat app has helped victims to register complaints and worked as catalyst to our moves.”
Police official added, “141 women sub-inspectors and 1,205 women constables were recruited last year and women officers were also deployed for the ‘One Stop Centre’ initiative at hospitals, including DDU in Hari Nagar, Sanjay Gandhi in Mangolpuri and GTB in Dilshad Garden.”
About 23,306 personnel were trained in 2015 under gender sensitisation programme, in contrast to 8035 and 6401 in 2014 and 2013 respectively.” Under women safety initiatives’, special women deployment was done in 300 bus stops, 859 patrol vans for 24X7 were picketed to assist women returning late at night or if stranded.
As per records, women helpline number 1091 under Delhi Police’s project “Parivartan’, received 891 calls up to November 30 as compared to 1,466, it received in 2014. Similarly, anti-stalking helpline number 1096 received 47,683 calls this year in contrast to 51732 in 2014. A senior police official said, “We saw an encouraging response from women in our society who are aware of these helplines and our apps as we recorded 59,396 downloads of our applications in Android phones.”
Role of social chat messenger WhatsApp and Hike also came in front as data showed that total of 28,547 messages were received by police on these groups. However, only 29 messages were verified.
“We were and we are onto zero-tolerance for crime against women so as to ensure our girls move freely and safely ‘any-time’ they want, across the city,” added police official.