The Supreme Court on September 28 took suo motu cognisance of recent reports of rape and sexual assault in Delhi-NCR and opened proceedings on broader failures in public safety. A bench of Justices J. B. Pardiwala and K. Vinod Chandran said the case would examine institutional prevention and monitoring, not decide individual criminal culpability in the separate investigations.
The bench referred to three reported cases: the alleged gang rape of a 17-year-old at Aastha Kunj Park, the alleged sexual assault of a minor on a sleeper bus travelling from Greater Noida to Delhi, and the alleged gang rape and murder of a teenage girl in Swaroop Nagar. Those accusations remain subject to their own investigations and trials; placing them in the court’s public-safety review does not establish guilt.
As an interim measure, the court directed the Delhi Police Commissioner to create dedicated district teams headed by officers not below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police. Within four weeks, the teams are to survey vulnerable locations, prepare district-level vulnerability maps, strengthen patrolling and security arrangements, and audit lighting and CCTV coverage to identify blind spots.
The court also asked the Delhi High Court to place the cited cases before a designated fast-track special court and seek completion of the trials, preferably within one year. It sought comprehensive status reports on safety arrangements and on police and Union Home Ministry use of national systems for tracking sexual offenders and investigations. The directions begin judicial oversight; they do not by themselves prove that every measure has been implemented or resolve the underlying criminal cases. The matter is listed for further directions and compliance on October 5.