Patrol call to avert rape

TT, New Delhi, June 13: The National Human Rights Commission today expressed concern over the increasing number of gang-rape cases being reported from the National Capital Region that covers Delhi and its peripheral areas in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan.

The rights panel suggested joint patrolling by police of the four states, making it clear that ensuring the safety of citizens, particularly women and children, was a prime duty of a state.

"The sorrowful contents of the media reports are indicative of an atmosphere of fear, insecurity and uncertainty prevailing in the NCR region, " the commission said.

"Ensuring safety of the citizens, specially the women and children, is one of the prime duties of the state. It seems that some conspicuous steps are immediately required to be taken by the law enforcing agencies so that these kinds of incidents do not reoccur," it added.

The commission has asked for suggestions from the police commissioners of Delhi and Faridabad and the senior superintendents of police of Noida and Ghaziabad on whether a joint action programme by the law-enforcement agencies of the NCR region could be planned and executed. It gave them six weeks to respond.

The rights panel also issued a notice to the police commissioner of Gurgaon, Haryana, and called for a detailed report on the May 30 gang rape of a housewife, whose child was killed by the rapists.

The director-general of police, Haryana, has been directed to detail the steps being taken to ensure the safety of citizens, especially women. They have been given four weeks to respond.

According to media reports, the woman was gang-raped by four persons who threw her child out of a van, resulting in the infant's death. The woman later travelled with her child's body by Metro to reach her parents' place in Tughlaqabad, Delhi, where a doctor declared the infant dead. The woman then went back to Gurgaon to lodge an FIR along with her husband.

In Uttar Pradesh's Noida district, which borders the national capital, women were raped by gangs in two separate incidents after the rapists had trussed up the male family members.

During last year's Jat agitation, several women from Delhi were gang-raped in Haryana's Murthal village.