New Delhi:
Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, who received a strongly-worded letter from Congress president Sonia Gandhi yesterday demanding more safety for women, has said that he will make a statement about the incident in Parliament.
Mr Shinde told this to reporters after chairing a high-level meeting with top city cops in his North Block office this morning.
Mrs Gandhi in her letter to Mr Shinde called the brutal gang rape of a medical student in a moving bus in Delhi on Sunday a "shame for all of us who are responsible for security of our cities" and asked him to "sensitise police to the danger our daughters, sisters, mothers face every day." Security agencies, she said, must be motivated and equipped to "deal with this menace."
Mrs Gandhi wrote a letter to the Delhi Chief Minister to and also visited the hospital where the student is fighting for her life late last night.
The Home Minister, who faced the ire of MPs across political parties for the law and order situation, had made a statement in Parliament yesterday promising steps to ensure better security for women, including the setting up of a special committee headed by the Home Secretary to frame guidelines.
At this morning's meeting, Mr Shinde's ministry is taking stock of what the police can do to prevent such incidents. Police officials say they have identified about 1300 poorly-lit stretches in Delhi where they say maximum crimes against women take place. These will need to be manned better to prevent crime. They will also keep a closer watch on buses; tinted windows and curtains will have to be removed from buses, they said.
On Sunday evening, the 23-year-old medical student was gang-raped and brutally beaten up by six men in a moving bus for almost an hour, before she and her male friend, who was also beaten badly, were thrown out of the bus at a flyover.
The police have said the crime went undetected also because the chartered, privately owned bus had tinted windows and blinds drawn across.