Hyderabad: “I was forced to take this extra step of checking for central locks after I heard about so many cases of women getting assaulted in cabs,” said Becky Shaju Mathew, who uses cabs to shuttle between work and home. She was referring to reports that criminally inclined city cab drivers exploit security features like the central locking system and the child lock to trap passengers inside.
In April this year, the Ministry of Women and Child Development issued guidelines for the new Taxi Policy, which includes removal of the locking systems on cabs, but it does not seem to be implemented. Hyderabad police’s She Teams suggest that women carry pepper spray and use WhatsApp to alert the police. “No taxi in the city can take passengers without registering with the police. So we can track them and the owner easily,” said assistant commissioner of police M. Snehita, in charge of She Teams in Rachakonda commissionerate.
In the same commissionerate a case was filed in April against two men who posed as cab drivers and attempted to assault a woman inside a cab. Though the new guidelines recommend removal of the central and child locking systems from taxis, T. Raghunath, joint transport commissioner of Hyderabad, asserted that there is no rule yet to mandate the same. It’s thus up to women to be wary of this threat. An employee from Microsoft, who didn’t want to be named, admitted she had never thought about the child lock trapping her in a cab. “I use it for my child, but never thought it could be used in this scenario,” she said.
Adhi Shankar, secretary of the city-based road safety organisation, RoadKraft, said that passengers must have a look at the edges of the rear door and disengage the locks before entering. “Or put your hand inside through the window and try and open the door from within to check.” Taxi associations are doing their bit to ensure passengers' safety. The Telangana Cab Drivers and Owners Association president, Santosh Reddy, said, "45,000 cabs ply on the roads of Hyderabad, of which 4000 are in my association. We collaborate with police and train our drivers to behave properly with passengers."
Safety features such as compulsory display of the driver's licence inside and outside the cab, constructing a grill between the front and rear seats, and using GPS alert buttons have been suggested, but haven't materialised.
