Delhi top cop meets Tirath, discusses women safety

NEW DELHI - Delhi Police Commissioner B.K. Gupta Friday met union Women and Child Development Minister Krishna Tirath here to discuss women’s safety in the city following a Mizoram woman’s abduction and gangrape.

At the end of the meeting, Gupta said 300 more police cobntrol room vans will be deployed to patrol the capital’s roads and gender sensitisation workshops will also be organised at police stations to handle cases related to women more effectively.

“The police commissioner told me that he has already asked for an additional 300 police control room vans which will patrol the roads through the day and night and improve the security status. I had earlier said that the patrolling done on the roads was not enough,” Tirath told reporters here after the meeting.

“I also told the commissioner that language was a barrier when it comes to calling the police and registering a complaint. It happened in the case of the gangrape when the victim’s friend had called the police. He assured me that better trained police personnel will now be put in the police control room. He also agreed to conducting gender sensitisation workshops at police stations and said he will get back on this within the next two days,” she added.

As an offshoot of the Nov 23 gangrape case when the victim, a BPO staffer, was dropped a little distance from her residence by her office cab and she was being abducted, Delhi Police issued a notice to all BPOs, corporate and media houses Thursday to pick and drop back their women emloyees at night right at their door step.

“We have taken steps to ensure that the overall safety of women in Delhi, one of them being the notice that we issued to BPOs and others about the pick and drop facility. We have also been keeping an eye on all the BPO cabs and stopped 151 of them last night to check if there were any security guards accompanying the women employees and asked them if they had any problem. Around 3,000 BPO cabs ply the capital’s roads between 1-5 a.m.,” Gupta said.

“We are also looking at setting up of women help desks in police stations. In the north campus, I have already ensured a bigger force of women police officers and will do the same in the south campus too,” he added.

As far as women being deployed in the PCR vans is concerned, Gupta said while that is being done during the daylight hours, it is yet to be implemented at night.