New Delhi: The rape of a 20-year-old woman in a car here, coincidentally a day before the fourth anniversary of the heinous gangrape of a para-medic here that shook the entire country’s conscience, has angered the people.
The 20-year-old woman was raped in the national capital by a cab driver on the pretext of giving her a lift, the city police said on Friday. The driver has been arrested.
It brought alive the memories of the grisly gangrape and brutal assault of a young para-medical student by six men in a moving bus in 2012. The 23-year-old woman, who later came to be known as Nirbhaya, died 13 days later in Singapore while undergoing treatment.
The attack on the 20-year-old drew reactions from political circle as well. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal accused the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and Lt. Governor Najeeb Jung of doing politics over women’s safety in Delhi.
“LG and PMO doing politics with women safety in Delhi. LG stopped salaries of all employees in DCW (Delhi Commission for Women). Police becomes corrupt and ineffective under them,” Kejriwal tweeted.
The AAP national convener’s remarks came after the woman, a resident of Noida who came to Delhi in search of a job on Wednesday, was raped by 30-year-old taxi driver Aman in a car he had rented, on the pretext of giving her a lift. The car has the Ministry of Home Affairs sticker on its windscreen.
The 30-year-old attacker is a resident of the Moti Bagh slums in south Delhi. He was nabbed on Thursday noon from his residence and the car has been seized.
The Congress criticised the state and the central governments for playing the blame game instead of taking proper measures for women’s safety in the national capital.
Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken told IANS: “This is a very unfortunate incident on the fourth anniversary of Nirbhaya. It clearly indicates that the situation has gone from bad to worse in the city.”
“And the reason is that both the state and central governments are putting blame on each other rather than doing on their own,” he alleged.
Hitting out at the AAP-led Delhi government, Maken said: “Delhi government has shelved the programmes of the previous government which was started after the Nirbhaya incident, like ‘awaz Uthao Programme’, helpline for woman and also the gender resource centre.”
Slamming Kejriwal for not fulfilling his poll promises of installing CCTV cameras in the buses and providing marshals in the Delhi Transport Corporation buses, Maken said: “Besides the promises made by the government to install CCTV cameras and provide marshals in the buses, these plans are yet to take off.”
Swaraj India President Yogendra Yadav also condemned the incident and accused the other political parties of not having any political will on women’s security in the city.
“Lack of political will is the principal reason for virtually no action on women’s security in the last four years in Delhi,” Yadav said.
“Popular protest resulted in Justice J.S. Verma report, fast track court and Nirbhaya Fund. But all this did not result in an iota of additional security for the Indian woman,” Yadav said.
