Encroachments on railway land behind rise in crime

Deteriorating infrastructure and lack of proper security arrangements has meant that crime in the Delhi Delhi division of the railways has been allowed to run rampant. In a recent front page report, DNA had recently highlighted the problems citing various reasons not just to the growth in crime but also as the reasons why crimes were becoming difficult to solve.

While encroachments on railway land have made the outer areas crime prone, lack of cameras, a short staffed Railways Protection Force (RPF) and unavailability of police dogs have hindered investigations in many cases.

But experts say that the lack of RPF manpower has meant that crimes, especially against women, has grown over the years. Statistics show that cases of rape and molestation. between 2013 (760) and 2015 (3,356) saw a massive spike of 341% in crime cases. In 2015, major cases included: 10 murders, seven attempts to murder, 15 rapes, 40 kidnappings, 102 robberies and 2,768 thefts.

In many cases, the culprits got away.

DNA had also exclusively reported that in Delhi division only 11 out of 232 railway stations in have CCTV cameras, after which the DRM had announced that money from the Nirbhaya Fund would be used to install cameras at many …read more