Police need to be gender-sensitized to curb rape incidents: Tirath

NEW DELHI - Police need to be gender-sensitized to curb incidents of rape, Women and Child Development Minister Krishna Tirath said Thursday reacting to the gangrape of a call centre employee from the northeast, and added that she will write to the union home minister as well as Delhi Police Commissioner on the matter.

“I am going to write to the home minister and the Delhi Police Commissioner that gender-sensitization sessions should be conducted for police personnel so that such cases can be addressed promptly. Also, more PCR vans should patrol the capital’s roads - not just those pockets where northeastern students stay - so that the city as a whole is more safe for women,” Tirath told IANS.

NGOs, she said, will be involved in the sensitization drive.

The BPO employee, a northeastern woman aged 30, was abducted by four-five men after she was dropped back home from work at night in Dhaula Kuan in south Delhi. The men abducted her in a tempo goods carrier and gangraped her. The men dumped her later at Mangolpuri in northwest Delhi.

“For the BPOs, a set of guidelines for the safety of their women employees is very important. While I am aware that they have transport policies to pick and drop their employees, I will write to the BPOs that stricter guidelines should be there for their safety,” Tirath said.

“So maybe there should be security personnel in the cabs that drive back the women from work and also, the women should be dropped at their doorstep and not at a distance as it happened in this case,” she added.

Reiterating similar incidents of harassment of northeastern women in Delhi around the same time last year, Tirath said she had written to the home ministry then too but nothing much had come out of that.

“I had written to Home Minister P. Chidambaram Oct 28, 2009 regarding cases of sexual harassment of northeastern women in Delhi and suggested a national consultation involving the home ministry, the women and child development ministry and the police to address the matter. I did get a response, but nothing much came out of that,” Tirath told IANS.

“There were some sensitization workshops for the police after that, but soon the police got involved in the Commonwealth Games. As it is they were overburdened. So the matter was forgotten. But this time, I will speak to the commissioner to take necessary steps immediately,” she said.