Metro to put in place help desk for women travellers

Taking note of the rising crime against women, all the five Metro stations in the city are setting up special help desks, which will have five female cops each. Leena Dhankhar reports.

Taking note of the rising crime against women, all the five Metro stations in the city are setting up special help desks, which will have five female cops each.

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Though the dedicated desks would be set up in about a week time, the woman constables have already been deployed on the Metro stations on Thursday itself.

The women cops will be present at these help desks till the arrival and departure of the last train of the day. One of the constables will be armed with a carbine gun and each team will be supervised by a lady officer of ACP rank, a senior police officer said.

Now, women passengers can complain of any misconduct or violence at the help desk and actions would be taken promptly.

"We want women to feel safe and those who are commuting in Metro should have a help desk to lodge complains on the spot. A lot of complaints were made against male passengers for teasing women in Metro trains," said Maheshwar Dayal, deputy commissioner of police (east).

The move comes amid the increasing concerns over women's safety in the Millennium City, where a majority of female residents work in corporate offices till late at night.

The recent incident of gang rape-cum-murder of a 23-year-old women in a moving bus in Delhi triggered series of protests across the country.

The woman was brutally beaten and sexually assaulted by six men in Delhi on December 16. She died in Singapore during treatment.