The aftermath of the abduction and gang rape of a teenage girl in a car in New Delhi on 12 December – the fourth in the capital in the last two months – set off the usual reactions from the government and the media. The police announced measures which should have actually been in place a long time ago. The chief minister gave instructions which had been issued earlier but had not been followed. The media repeated the many inadequacies in police investigation procedures, shortcomings in the judicial system leading to a low rate of conviction of rapists and offered glib explanations for the increasing rate of urban crime. Neither the police nor the media focused on implementation of existing guidelines and learning from the experiences of past cases of rape across the country. A 30-year-old business process outsourcing (BPO) employee was abducted and assaulted in New Delhi in a moving car on the night of 26 November while she was walking home after getting off an office vehicle. Not only were the National Commission for Women’s (NCW) guidelines regarding the safety of women in BPOs flouted, but the police failed to react quickly though a police control room (PCR) call was made within seconds of the abduction. Following a number of instances of rape and murder of BPO women employees across the country in the past few years, the NCW had directed call centre managements to ensure that women employees are dropped at their doorstep, are not the first to be picked up and the last to be dropped off and that a security guard accompanies them. The teenage victim too was walking to her mother’s factory to pick her up after work. Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit said that the labour commissioner had been instructed to "reiterate" orders to drop women at their residences in the night. Why were these orders not being followed until now? Are the guidelines being followed strictly in other parts of the country?
The other measures announced include deployment of more women officers, gender sensitisation and a rapid response of the police, movement of PCR vans in vulnerable areas, setting up citizen panchayats, and establishing fast track courts to try rape cases. The Delhi Commission for Women wants all call centre taxis to have a global positioning system (GPS). The Delhi police has initiated a special drive against vehicles with reflective and dark glass (an infringement of the Central Motor Vehicle Rules 1989).
Why were all these not already in place? While Gurgaon, Noida and Ghaziabad are information technology (IT) and BPO
hubs, what about the safety of women workers in other industries and indeed all women? And while it is an accepted fact that employers have an obligation to ensure the safety of their employees, does this absolve the police of the duty to patrol the city diligently at night? The police force’s capabilities to react quickly to emergency situations are also in doubt despite prompt complaints and the availability of advanced communications technology. In the case of the BPO employee, who was raped on 26 November, the PCR van and the policemen from the local station failed to locate the tempo in which she was abducted. Following this, the Delhi police carried out a mock drill and identified the possible routes of escape by criminals. Despite this, in the rape case that followed less than a month later 600 police personnel took three hours to trace the vehicle though they had been provided with the last four digits of its number plate. How seriously did the force take this mock drill?
Another disturbing trend that is emerging is the involvement of minors in urban crimes. The case of three young siblings being sexually abused by their senior classmates in Delhi’s Prasad Nagar for well over a year came to light a few months ago. In the recent rape case too, a minor is among the five accused. According to the police record, as reported in the media, the involvement of juveniles in sex-related crimes in Delhi has risen from 5%-10% to 27% over the last few years.
The issue of rapid urbanisation across the country without an accompanying increase in either civic amenities or resources to deal with this growth has been a part of public discourse for long. While the causes of rising crime in India’s urban areas (the average rate of crime in urban agglomeration centres at 321.8 was much higher than the national crime rate of 181.5, according to the National Crime Records Bureau report of 2008) are complex, "migrants" and "outsiders" become handy culprits to blame for rising urban crime. The authorities’ lack of preparedness in dealing with burgeoning urbanisation are hardly focused on. According to the Delhi police records, more than 83% of people involved in crimes this year were from the city itself, while only 17% were "outsiders".
There are reams of suggestions as well as official measures already in place on police and judicial procedures to prevent/ deal with rape. The point is whether the government cares enough about the safety of its women citizens to ensure their
implementation.
courtesy-epw.
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