Authorities lax in ensuring Women’s Safety in Delhi: SC

Why in News?

The Supreme Court took suo motu cognisance of recent sexual assault cases in Delhi-NCR, highlighting failures of law enforcement and public administration. It emphasised that expressions of concern must translate into concrete preventive action and accountability.

The SC directed the Delhi Police to:

• Identify vulnerable locations: Constitute district-level teams to inspect isolated stretches, parks, transport hubs, markets and areas around educational institutions.
• Prepare vulnerability maps: Share information across adjoining police stations to address recurring crime patterns.
• Strengthen patrolling: Increase police presence during hours identified as particularly unsafe.
• Audit lighting and CCTV coverage: Identify blind spots and repair non-functional infrastructure.
• Report existing safeguards: Explain arrangements for protecting women and children in public spaces. 

Understanding Women’s Safety:

Women’s safety means freedom from physical, sexual, psychological and economic abuse, along with the ability to study, work, travel and participate in society without intimidation.

It therefore requires attention to interconnected spaces:

• Homes: Domestic violence, marital abuse, dowry harassment and coercive control over finances and movement.
• Public spaces: Sexual harassment, stalking, assault and intimidation in streets, parks and markets.
• Transport: Harassment during travel, unsafe last-mile connectivity, isolated stops and inadequate emergency response.
• Workplaces and educational institutions: Sexual harassment, abuse of authority and retaliation against complainants.
• Digital platforms: Cyberstalking, threats, impersonation, doxxing and non-consensual intimate imagery, including sexualised deepfakes.
• Situations of heightened vulnerability: Trafficking, displacement and dependence on employers or intermediaries.

Safety should expand women’s capabilities rather than restrict them. Measures that discourage women from travelling, working or studying in the name of protection can reproduce the very exclusion that safety policies are meant to address.

What do the data indicate?

• Registered crimes against women: NCRB’s Crime in India 2024 places registered crimes against women at approximately 4.41 lakh, compared with 4.48 lakh in 2023, a decline of around 1.5%.
• Violence within households: According to NFHS-5, 2019-21, 29.3% of ever-married women aged 18-49 had experienced spousal violence, compared with 31.2% in NFHS-4.

Constitutional and Governance Dimensions:

(i) Constitutional foundations:

• Article 14: Equality before law and equal protection of laws.
• Article 15(1): Prohibition of discrimination on grounds including sex.
• Article 15(3): Enables special provisions for women and children.
• Article 19: Fear and violence can undermine the meaningful exercise of freedoms, including movement and occupation.
• Article 21: Protection of life and personal liberty encompasses dignity and bodily integrity.
• Article 39(a) and (d): Equal livelihood opportunities and equal pay support women’s economic autonomy.
• Article 51A(e): Places a fundamental duty on citizens to renounce practices derogatory to women’s dignity.

(ii) Safety as a governance responsibility:

• Police and public order are primarily State subjects, but women’s safety is a multi-agency governance issue involving urban local bodies, transport authorities, health institutions, employers, educational institutions, prosecutors and courts.
• Delhi presents an additional coordination challenge because police and public order fall outside the Delhi Legislative Assembly’s legislative competence under Article 239AA. Across Delhi-NCR, policing also spans multiple jurisdictions. This makes inter-agency information sharing, coordinated patrolling and seamless transfer of complaints important for preventing jurisdictional gaps.

Why does Women’s Insecurity Persist?

• Patriarchal attitudes and unequal power: Social acceptance of male control can normalise harassment and abuse. Victim-blaming converts the survivor’s behaviour into the object of scrutiny rather than the perpetrator’s conduct, weakening accountability.
• Economic dependence and weak exit options: Lack of independent income, housing, childcare and social support can make leaving abusive relationships economically difficult. Economic autonomy is therefore also a safety mechanism.
• Under-reporting and barriers to reporting: Fear of retaliation, social stigma, loss of employment and family pressure can deter complaints. Insensitive questioning and repeated narration of traumatic experiences can further discourage survivors.
• Failures in routine policing: Delayed complaint registration, weak patrolling, poor inter-station coordination and inadequate follow-up allow known risk locations and repeat patterns to persist.
• Unsafe public infrastructure: Dark streets, isolated bus stops, inaccessible toilets and poorly maintained public spaces can increase vulnerability. The issue is not merely whether infrastructure exists, but whether it is functional, accessible and connected to a rapid response mechanism.
• Weak investigation and prolonged proceedings: Delayed forensic examination, poor evidence preservation, witness intimidation and prolonged trials can weaken access to justice. Deterrence depends not only on severity of punishment, but also on the certainty and timeliness of detection, investigation and adjudication.
• Unequal access to protection: Rural women, migrant workers, domestic workers, women with disabilities and women facing caste-based discrimination may face additional barriers to police, shelters, legal assistance and safe transport.

Major Legal Safeguards:

(i) Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023: The BNS contains provisions addressing rape, sexual harassment, stalking, voyeurism, acid attacks, dowry death and cruelty by a husband or his relatives. Punishments vary depending on the particular offence and circumstances. 

(ii) Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023: Section 173 permits information about a cognizable offence to be given irrespective of where the offence occurred, supporting the Zero FIR mechanism. Information may also be provided electronically, subject to prescribed requirements.

(iii) Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005: It recognises physical, sexual, verbal, emotional and economic abuse, and provides remedies such as protection orders, residence orders and monetary relief.

(iv) POSH Act, 2013:

The Act establishes institutional mechanisms for workplace sexual harassment complaints:

• Internal Committee: Required in establishments with 10 or more workers.
• Local Committee: Receives complaints from establishments with fewer than 10 workers, or where the complaint is against the employer.

Thus, workplace protection is not limited to large formal-sector offices.

(v) Other relevant laws: 

• POCSO Act, 2012: Protects children below 18 from sexual offences through a gender-neutral framework and child-friendly procedures.
• Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961: Prohibits giving, taking and demanding dowry.
• Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006: Provides mechanisms to prevent child marriage and punish specified violations.
• Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956: Addresses commercial sexual exploitation and related trafficking activities.

Important Government Initiatives for Women Safety: 

• Nirbhaya Fund: Established in 2013, the non-lapsable Nirbhaya Fund supports projects for women’s safety. As per govt data for 2025: ₹7712 crore has been allocated up to FY 2024-25, of which approximately 76% has been utilised. 
• Mission Shakti: The programme has two components:
  • Sambal: Safety and security, including One Stop Centres, Women Helpline, Beti Bachao Beti Padhao and Nari Adalat.
  • Samarthya: Women’s empowerment, including support for shelter, working women’s accommodation and childcare.

This creates an important safety-empowerment continuum: protection from violence must be accompanied by the economic and social support required for independent decision-making.

• Emergency Assistance and Survivor Support: 
  • ERSS-112: Integrated emergency assistance involving police, fire and health services.
  • Women Helpline-181: Assistance, information and referral.
  • One Stop Centres: Medical assistance, legal support, counselling and temporary shelter.
  • Women Help Desks: Accessible points of assistance in police stations.
  • Project Stree Manoraksha: Strengthens trauma-informed psychosocial support through One Stop Centres.
• Safe City Projects: They seek to improve women’s safety through infrastructure, technology and policing interventions. The initial eight cities include Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Lucknow and Mumbai.
• Workplace redressal and justice delivery:
  • SHe Box: Online workplace sexual-harassment complaint mechanism.
  • Fast Track Special Courts, including exclusive POCSO courts: Support adjudication of rape and child sexual-abuse cases.

Why do Laws and Schemes fall short?

The principal challenge is the implementation gap between formal protection and lived protection.

• Fragmented accountability: Different agencies control policing, lighting, transport, sanitation and public spaces, but no single authority may be responsible for resolving the complete safety problem.
• Infrastructure without maintenance: A CCTV camera, streetlight or emergency button provides little protection if it is non-functional or disconnected from response systems.
• Formal compliance: Workplace committees may exist without adequate training, independence or awareness among employees.
• Incomplete survivor support: Legal action alone cannot address the need for safe housing, income, childcare and psychological care.
• Uneven institutional capacity: Police staffing, forensic facilities, prosecution support and victim services vary considerably across regions.
• Weak outcome monitoring: Counting cameras installed or funds spent does not reveal whether response times improved or women actually feel safer.
• Digital enforcement difficulties: Rapid circulation of abusive content, anonymous accounts and cross-border platforms complicate investigation and accountability.

The central shift required is from measuring inputs (funds, cameras, committees and schemes) to measuring outcomes (response time, functional infrastructure, access to justice and actual safety).

Why is Women’s Safety a development issue?

Women’s safety directly affects human capital formation, labour-force participation and inclusive urbanisation:

• Education: Unsafe routes and harassment can affect attendance, mobility and educational choices.
• Employment: Fear of travel, unsafe workplaces and restrictions on working hours can narrow access to jobs.
• Economic costs: Women may incur additional expenditure on transport, accommodation or accompaniment- the “mobility penalty” of insecurity.
• Health: Violence can result in injury, trauma and prolonged psychological distress.
• Democratic participation: Threats and intimidation can discourage participation in public meetings, politics and online debate.
• Intergenerational effects: Exposure to domestic violence can have lasting consequences for children.

Thus, women’s safety is not merely a law-and-order issue; it is closely linked to substantive equality, human development and inclusive growth.

Way Forward: 

• Institutionalise preventive safety audits: Conduct regular audits of parks, transport hubs, educational institutions and isolated routes with women users participating in identifying risks. Assign each identified deficiency to a responsible agency with a time-bound resolution mechanism.
• Move from smart infrastructure to responsive infrastructure: Integrate CCTV, emergency calls, transport alerts and panic systems with trained personnel and dispatch protocols. Monitor equipment uptime and response time, not merely installation numbers.
• Strengthen police accountability: Ensure accessible complaint registration, effective use of Zero FIR, coordinated investigation across jurisdictions and accountability for repeated failures to address known high-risk locations.
• Improve investigation and prosecution: Strengthen forensic capacity, evidence preservation, witness protection and investigator-prosecutor coordination. Speed must be combined with due process and quality of investigation.
• Create a seamless survivor-support chain: Connect police stations → hospitals → One Stop Centres → legal-services authorities → shelters through defined referral protocols so that survivors do not have to navigate fragmented institutions themselves.
• Make workplace protection substantive: Audit the functioning of Internal and Local Committees, train members, ensure confidentiality and protect complainants from retaliation. Special attention is needed for domestic workers and informal-sector workers who often fall outside conventional workplace structures.
• Treat economic autonomy as a safety intervention: Expand access to livelihoods, affordable housing, childcare and safe transport. These are not merely welfare measures; they strengthen women’s ability to leave abusive situations and make independent choices.
• Address social norms alongside enforcement: Promote consent, gender equality and respectful conduct, particularly among adolescents and young men, while challenging victim-blaming by institutions, communities and media.

Women’s Safety is a specific target under Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG 5), which aims to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. 

The objective should therefore be to move from a reactive model of protection after violence to a preventive model. The goal should be to develop indicators such as emergency response time, infrastructure uptime, complaint resolution, conviction-process timelines, access to support services and women’s perceptions of safety. 

At the same time, surveillance technologies must incorporate safeguards for privacy, proportionality and prevention of misuse. 

Practice Prelims MCQ: 

Q. With reference to mechanisms for women’s safety in India, consider the following statements:

1. The Nirbhaya Fund is a non-lapsable fund.
2. Under the POSH Act, the Local Committee can receive a complaint against the employer.
3. The Sambal component of Mission Shakti includes One Stop Centres and the Women Helpline.

Which of the statements given above are correct?

(a) 1 and 2 only
(b) 2 and 3 only
(c) 1 and 3 only
(d) 1, 2 and 3

Answer: (d)

Practice Mains Question: 

Q. “Women’s safety depends on the accountability of everyday institutions as much as on the strength of criminal laws.” Discuss with reference to policing, urban governance and survivor support in India.

UPSC Mains PYQ 2017: 

Q. Is the National Commission for Women able to strategise and tackle the problems that women face at both public and private spheres? Give reasons in support of your answer.