The Hindu : New Delhi News : Criminals haunt Parliament Street

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Sunday, Mar 23, 2008
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New Delhi

Criminals haunt Parliament Street

Staff Reporter

– PHOTO: V. V. KRISHNAN

WHOSE STREET?: With the police confined largely to controlling protest rallies and demonstrations day in and day out, there is no stopping criminals on the Capital’s Parliament Street.

NEW DELHI: The preoccupation of New Delhi District Police with political rallies and demonstrations day in and day out is seriously affecting the law and order situation on Parliament Street and around with the number of incidents of harassment of women on the roads in the area shooting up alarmingly.

“The situation has become really intolerable. All kind of rowdy elements hang around bus stops in the evening when women employees are returning home. I have had a couple of nasty experiences with such elements at the bus stop opposite INS Building on Rafi Marg,” said a young woman journalist working in PTI Building opposite All India Radio.

Such incidents have had a dampening impact on the morale of women as it leaves them feeling both insecure and deeply hurt. For many other women journalists, the harassment has been in the form of unscrupulous elements damaging their vehicles parked on Rafi Marg or near the Reserve Bank of India next door to PTI Building.

“First someone scratched abuses on the windscreen of my car and then a few days later similar vulgar messages were etched on the side windows. Though a complaint has been made to the police, there appears to be no visible action as such episodes continue unabated,” complained another woman journalist.

Frequently, emboldened by the police ineptitude to deal with the situation, ruffians in the area even go to the extent of damaging the vehicles of women workers. “The bumper of my car was deliberately broken off by someone while it was parked near PTI Building,” complained yet another woman employee.

The incidence of crime on the high-security Parliament Street is not confined to such incidents of harassment and damage to property alone. Barely 100 metres from the Parliament Street police station there have been brutal attacks on people walking to bus stops in the evening. In one such attack recently, Ranjit Abhigyan, former spokesperson of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), was hit in the head with a heavy object by some unidentified assailants who made away with his cash and mobile phone. But like in other instances of street crime, in this one too no arrests have been made by the local police so far.

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