Crime against women in Delhi has gone up: HC

Crime against women has gone up in the national capital, Delhi High Court said today as it stressed the need for installing more CCTV cameras in the city and lighting up dark spots expeditiously.
A bench of justice Badar Durrez Ahmed and Ashutosh Kumar sought a fresh update regarding the status of installing CCTVs in the city, particularly in police stations, after Delhi government said the proposal to set up the cameras had not received the Centre's approval on the ground it was "gender neutral" and not "gender sensitive" or women specific.
Crime against women has gone up in the national capital, the bench observed.

The submission by Delhi government's additional standing counsel Anuj Aggarwal was countered by the lawyer for Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) who said putting up CCTV cameras in public areas got sidelined over the issue of sharing of their feed.
When DCW Chairperson Swati Maliwal sought that some Delhi government ministers should be included in the special task force on women safety which had only bureaucrats, Aggarwal said it was the bureaucrats who run the government.
Disagreeing with the view of the government lawyer, the bench retorted: "Are you trying to say the government is run by bureaucrats? Never. Policy decisions are taken by the elected representatives and implementation is by the bureaucrats."

The issue of lack of CCTVs was raised by advocate Meera Bhatia and DCW Chairperson Swati Maliwal who said there were hardly any cameras in the city or in police stations, and many of those installed were non-functional.

Maliwal also raised the issue of lighting up of dark spots in the city and sought directions to civic bodies to mark who owns or maintains each light pole, so that the appropriate authority could be informed if these were not functioning.
The bench said the Delhi State Legal Services Authority
was a significant player and the Lieutenant Governor should consider including it in the Special Task Force (STF) on women's safety.

The LG had taken the decision to reconstitute the STF after the court on December 21 last year had asked whether any such unit was in place in the national capital.
In its order, the court also issued directions to MHA to expedite approval by the competent authority of the proposal to employ 14,753 more cops in Delhi.
MHA was directed to file a report indicating the status of the other manpower proposals forwarded by the Delhi Police.
During the hearing, the court also took up the issue of digitising the records and case property in the 'malkhana', to which Delhi Police said the latest version of its Core Application Software (CAS) for the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems was being developed and digitisation would commence thereafter.

On the issue of lowering the waiting time on police helpline number 100, Delhi Police counsel Rajesh Mahajan said it has been decided to increase the lines to 100 from 60 with an additional 30 as back-up in case of overflow of calls.
He said this was done on the basis of four-year data and added that prior to increasing the lines, there was need to increase the manpower to attend the calls.
The court was hearing a PIL initiated on its own after the December 16, 2012 gangrape case, in which it has been giving directions from time to time with regard to improving crime investigation and protection of women in Delhi. The matter is listed for further hearing on March 1.