New Delhi, January 10
In trying to strengthen the safety and security of women in the national Capital, the Delhi police will increase its night patrolling, said Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde today.

These patrols of the Delhi police will be on motorcycles. They will be conducted in the vulnerable areas that have been identified by the police.

Sources said that two motorcycles will patrol the opposite sides of a stretch of the road. They will meet at the centre and give reports about any mishap to each other.

Besides night patrolling, a Mahila Help Desk will be constituted at each police station. “The cell number and telephone number of a Mahila Help Desk is to be notified in all the schools and colleges in the area under the jurisdiction of the police station,” said the Home Minister at a press conference here today.

Shinde added that several committees will be set up at each police station. These committees will consist of civil defence personnel, home guards, ex-servicemen and women NGOs. The reason for forming such committees is, “so that issues relating to public, particularly women, are brought before the police officers in a more interactive manner”. 

New Delhi, January 10
All the corridors of Delhi Metro’s Phase III will be open to the public by 2016, adding another 140 km to the existing network, a senior official of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation said today.

Delhi Metro will start opening the corridors from September 2015 to March 2016 in phases and there would be no delay in this regard,” said Jitendra Tyagi, Director (Works).

“Two corridors of the Phase-III—Central Secretariat to Mandi House and Jehangirpuri to Bali—would be opened to the public in 2014, ahead of the schedule. The Central Secretariat-Mandi House was planned to take some load off from Rajiv Chowk station, the busiest and most crowded,” he added.

Phase-III would make travel on the network much easier for commuters as 9 to 10 interchange stations would be added to the network after its completion in 2016.

“There were some hurdles that we faced in the construction of the Phase-III, including the permission of the National Monument Authority for the Central Secretariat-Kashmere Gate corridor. However, we hope to finish the work on time now,” he added.

New Delhi, January 10
A 28-year-old woman, believed to be mentally disturbed, suffered severe leg injuries after she jumped onto the tracks of Welcome Metro station in northeast Delhi this afternoon, the police said.

The incident took place at around 12.10 pm on platform number one of the station, while the injured has been identified as Meena Chauhan, a resident of Vishwas Nagar.

“Meena was run over by a train after she jumped onto the tracks,” said Sanjay Bhatia, additional deputy commissioner of police (crime and railway).

Though the emergency brakes were applied and the train came to a halt, Meena suffered severe leg injuries. She was taken out of the tracks by the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) personnel posted at the station and rushed to Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital.

“Meena survived the accident with critical injuries and is undergoing treatment,” Bhatia added. The police is questioning Meena’s family to know if she was depressed and also analyzing the CCTV footage available at the station to ascertain whether she fell off accidentally.

New Delhi, January 10
In a shocking trend, male child syndrome is found to be embedded even in the posh localities of southwest district where people consider sex determination and selection to be a “private and personal affair and not a crime”.

They do not feel the need to discuss or report any such violation under the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of sex selection) Act, 1994 (PNDT Act) and for them it is interference into others’ affairs, reveals a new gender-based social audit carried on nearly 900 households and 100 stakeholders, comprising doctors, nurses, ASHA and aanganwadi workers in Vasant Kunj, Vasant Vihar, Mahipalpur, Dabri and Najafgarh.

What is more disturbing is that the survey, a joint project of NGO Centre for Social Research (CSR) and German embassy, found out that most of the respondents were quite candid about their preference for sons justifying it by reasons such as preserving family legacy and retention of property.

Respondents said that girl child means arranging for dowry and then protecting her chastity which emerged as another dominant reason for female foeticide. Social scientists observe that it is this appalling and patriarchal trend resulting in illegal abortions that has increased sexual violence against women and cases of child abuse.

CSR’s head of the research and development, Mansi Mishra, who has been leading the survey, said, “Families even among the rich and the educated class do not look upon sex determination as a crime and remain silent on the matter. The survey showed that the educated class believes that sex selection is practised by the economically backward strata of society.”

Importantly, there were also respondents who argued that sex determination should be legalised in India as is the case in some other countries as parents’ right while there were some who expressed reservations in talking about the subject knowing its legal ramification.

Another major issue was that in southwest district, which has the Capital’s lowest female sex ratio, there are very few NGOs who are engaged in advocacy efforts and the audit also revealed that the issue of declining sex-ratio and foeticide was not addressed in the meetings of the Resident Welfare Associations on the grounds that it was quite a personal affair.