CCTVs, street lights needed for safety: Delhi High Court

Lack of CCTVs, public toilets and street lights are contributing factors for rising crimes against women and children, according to the Delhi High Court, who directed that immediate measures be carried out to rectify the same.

The court's direction came while hearing a petition filed by Asha, a rag picker, whose daughters aged eight and 10 years have been missing from the Delhi's Aman Vihar district. A bench of Justice Vipin Sanghi and Justice PS Teji directed the installation of high resolution, sufficient storage capacity and high technical specification CCTV cameras as top priority after the counsel for Delhi Police, Rahul Mehra informed the court that there are 118 vulnerable locations identified for which 587 CCTVs are required to be installed, and would be delayed due to lack of funds.

The court said that there was a "grave urgency" for taking such steps and if sufficient funds were not available with the agencies, it would direct that the money was drawn from the Nirbhaya and Swachh Bharat Abhiyan funds. As per an affidavit filed by the then DCP of Outer District, Pankaj Kumar Singh, 389 children went missing from the area out of which 290 have been traced including 138 minor girls and 152 minor boys.

Taking note of the "alarmingly" large number of missing cases of minors and adults in the area, the court has said it "reflects an extremely poor state of affairs" there.