Chennai: Expressing anguish over the rise in crimes against women, the Madras high court directed state government to furnish the steps taken to prevent such crimes. A division bench comprising Justices Huluvadi G.Ramesh and M. Dhandapani gave the directive orally when a PIL from advocate A.P. Suryaprakasam came up for hearing on Wednesday. Suryaprakasam said that crimes against women were increasing. The steps taken by government were insufficient. To prevent atrocities on women, a fund called Nirbhaya Fund with Rs 10 billion corpus was announced by the Government of India in its 2013 budget.
Now, Rs 3,100 crore was available in the said fund till 2017 and last week, the central government allotted Rs 2,919 crore to 8 cities which includes Chennai, where special focus will be given to women's safety in public places and a quick response system to create deterrence against crime in these safe cities, he added.
The bench told the SGP that merely providing counseling or conducting investigation was not sufficient. This court needs details about how many FIRs were registered in such cases, the status of investigation on those FIRs as on date and the measures taken to prevent such incidents, the bench added. The bench posted to June 6, further hearing of the petition, which sought to implement th Nirbhaya Fund scheme relating to women's safety within 6 months.
