The Mumbai police believe in only paying lip service to women’s safety and hardly doing anything about it.
Otherwise, a crime branch exclusively of women and for women, announced with much fanfare almost 100 days ago, would be up and going. The cell has “officially” been formed, but it is still to become fully functional.
Launched on March 8, in the aftermath of the brutal gang rape of a woman in a moving bus in December in Delhi, the state home department had even made a special government resolution to clear the formation of the cell.
At least 83 officers, including a deputy commissioner (DCP), were sanctioned for the cell. Funds for the cell were to be drawn from the police modernisation fund that was already allotted to the Mumbai police. And all or a majority of them were supposed to be women.
But the special unit is still to have a proper office; the handful of officers posted have no place to sit and work. They are working out of a makeshift office inside the Byculla office of assistant commissioner (ACP) Lata Gavit, who is in-charge of the cell. DCP (operations) Sharda Raut heads the cell on paper.
“Officers neither have proper desks nor do they have any vehicle at their disposal,” an officer said. There have been instances of crime against women, some gruesome, like the acid attack on Preeti Rathi at Bandra railway station, after the cell was formed.
But neither did the cell handle the case nor did any of its officers visit the victim in hospital. “It should have ideally been their case and they should have investigated the matter,” another officer said. “It would have given them a chance to prove their mettle and establish themselves.” The officer, however, refused to say why so many posts in the cell are lying vacant.
Between January 1 and May 30, various police stations in the city registered 1,331 cases of crime against women. These include rape and kidnap, according to statistics available on the Mumbai police’s official website. And in the past 100 days (since the cell was formed), at least 731 cases have been registered across the city.
Strangely, the special women’s crime branch has handled only two cases till now — dowry and mental harassment.
A senior crime branch officer said the branch is currently concentrating on creating awareness about their functions. Right now, they are not involved in investigations, he said. “There is a crisis as far as the staff is concerned, but recruitments are on.”
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