by Yogesh Kumar Goyal
The alleged gang rape of a 16-year-old student inside a sleeper bus travelling between Greater Noida and Delhi has once again put all claims of women’s safety in the dock. The bus continued to travel for nearly 47 kilometres in the darkness of night, yet there was no effective monitoring anywhere. Tough laws were enacted after the Nirbhaya case, but the audacity of criminals shows that what is more important than the law is the real deterrent effect of fear of the law. The question is not merely about arrests; it is about accountability. The incident involving a 16-year-old student inside a sleeper bus in Delhi-NCR is a mirror reflecting the simultaneous failure of four things,our security system, monitoring of public transport, policing and social consciousness. On the night of August 4, a minor student was allegedly made to board a sleeper bus from Pari Chowk in Greater Noida by giving her misleading information, and the driver and conductor are accused of sexually assaulting her until Kashmere Gate.
After travelling approximately 47 kilometres, she was left near Ring Road close to Kashmere Gate. The most horrifying aspect of this incident is not merely the brutality of the crime but the entire security vacuum in which this crime became possible. A minor girl boards an unfamiliar bus at night, the bus travels a long distance, a crime takes place inside it, and at no point along the way is there any effective monitoring capable of preventing the crime. According to reports, curtains had been installed inside the bus, and serious questions have also arisen regarding the availability of CCTV cameras. If the interior of a public transport vehicle is so cut off from external surveillance that the safety of the passengers sitting inside becomes questionable, it is natural to demand answers from the system that allows such vehicles to operate on the roads.
There is another uncomfortable question here: the incident is said to have taken place on August 4, but the police made the information public on August 31. What happened during this long interval? Was investigative confidentiality the reason? Was information kept limited because of the privacy and safety of the victim? Or was there a lapse at some administrative level in information management? Clear and credible answers to these questions should be made public because, alongside the seriousness of the crime, police accountability is also an essential part of a democratic system. It is certainly noteworthy that after receiving the complaint, Kashmere Gate police took action, identified the bus through CCTV footage, arrested the accused driver and conductor, and also recovered the bus. In other words, before questioning the investigative capability of the police after the crime, it must also be acknowledged that technological surveillance played an important role in reaching the perpetrators. But the real test begins after the arrest. The job of the police is not merely to catch criminals after a crime has been committed; the most important objective of modern policing is to prevent crime before it occurs. If CCTV can identify the bus after the crime, the question is why the same technology could not detect suspicious activity beforehand.
After the Nirbhaya case, the country believed that the system would now change. The brutality inflicted on a 23-year-old woman in a moving bus in December 2012 stirred the entire country. Laws were made stricter, the legal definitions of sexual offences were expanded, a separate legal framework for sexual offences against minors was strengthened, and the issue of safety in public transport became part of the national debate. Four convicts in the Nirbhaya case were executed in 2020, but 13 years later, if a minor girl again becomes a victim of such brutality inside a moving bus, it is necessary to ask: we changed the laws, but how much did we change the system? The strictness of the law is necessary, but fear of the law is not created merely by the severity of punishment. The greatest fear in the mind of a criminal is the certainty of being caught. If he believes that he can commit a crime under the cover of darkness, on a deserted route, inside a vehicle beyond surveillance, and that no one will be there to stop him, then even the harshest punishment written in the law books cannot immediately become an effective deterrent. Therefore, the challenge is not merely that of stringent laws, but of assured surveillance, prompt arrest and time-bound justice.
The alleged contradictions that have emerged between the Delhi and Noida police regarding the incident are also a matter of concern. Delhi-NCR is today such a metropolitan region where the boundaries between cities are almost invisible to ordinary citizens, but when a crime occurs, those very boundaries become a question of police jurisdiction. If a girl boards a bus in Noida, travels towards Delhi and is dropped off in Delhi, why cannot there be real-time coordination between the different police units? Another aspect of this incident relates to accountability in public transport. The use of curtains in sleeper buses, surveillance inside the vehicle, identification of passengers, verification of drivers and conductors, deviation from prescribed routes, and the safety of lone or minor passengers travelling at night—all these aspects cannot be addressed merely by having rules on paper. Actual compliance with the rules must be ensured. Joint accountability of the transport department, police and bus operators must be established. Night buses should undergo mandatory monitoring, all sleeper buses should have functioning CCTV cameras and emergency communication systems, police verification and training of drivers and conductors should be conducted regularly, the prescribed routes and stops of buses should be digitally monitored, the crew should be required to follow a special protocol in suspicious situations involving a minor or a lone female passenger, and a shared real-time monitoring mechanism should be developed among the Noida, Ghaziabad and Delhi police. Most importantly, no woman or girl should be made to run from one police station to another in the name of ‘jurisdiction’ when she lodges a complaint.
However, we cannot free ourselves from our social responsibility by describing this incident merely as a failure of the police. On the one hand, a 16-year-old girl travelling alone at night becomes a target of criminals, while on the other hand, elderly women are abandoned by their own families. The question is not merely about the law; it is about the social mindset in which a vulnerable person becomes the easiest target. When sensitivity weakens within families, when power begins to command respect and criminal tendencies begin to be treated as influence, when wealth and muscle power become the basis of social prestige, the law alone cannot save society. Our greatest irony is that political statements begin after a crime. The opposition attacks the government, the ruling side presents the arrests as its achievement, and after a few days the debate gets buried under some other issue. But the fear of the victim, her future and the trauma inflicted upon her mind do not disappear because of any political statement. Women’s safety should not be an electoral slogan; it should be a fundamental test of governance.
Questions such as ‘How safe are women at night?’ cannot be answered through advertisements or political claims.
The answer must be visible on the streets, inside buses, in the response of the police and in those systems that provide security to a lone girl before she falls into danger. The present incident offers some clear lessons for Delhi-NCR. Night buses should be subject to mandatory monitoring, and all sleeper buses should have functioning CCTV cameras and emergency communication systems. Police verification and training of drivers and conductors should be conducted regularly; the prescribed routes and stops of buses should be digitally monitored; the crew should be required to follow a special protocol in suspicious situations involving a minor or a lone female passenger; and a shared real-time monitoring mechanism should be developed among the Noida, Ghaziabad and Delhi police. Most importantly, no woman or girl should be made to run from one police station to another in the name of ‘jurisdiction’ when she lodges a complaint.
We changed a great deal after Nirbhaya, but perhaps not as much as we should have. Making stringent laws is easy, but implementing the law on the ground is difficult. Installing CCTV cameras is easy; keeping them operational 24 hours a day is difficult. Parking police vehicles is easy; ensuring genuine patrolling is difficult. Making claims about women’s safety is easy, but creating a system in which no girl feels unsafe even when she is alone in the darkness of night is difficult. Therefore, treating this incident as merely another crime and forgetting it would be the biggest mistake. It is a warning that criminals become fearless when, somewhere within the system, the fear of consequences disappears. They must fear not merely the law, but its certain and impartial enforcement. Society must also decide whether it wants to remain a society that lights candles after a crime or become a society that ensures the safety of its daughters before a crime occurs.
(The author is a senior journalist actively engaged in journalism for 36 years and author of several books including ‘Sagar Se Antariksh Tak: Bharat Ki Raksha Kranti’)
