We apprehended all accused within 24 hrs in Shahdara case: Delhi Police commissioner Asthana

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, February 3

Delhi Police Commissioner Rakesh Asthana has defended his officers in the Shahdara rape issue, saying the first of the mobile PCR van reached the spot in little over two minutes.

The police’s role or lack of it was criticised after reports emerged that the victim’s family had approached the police on a number of occasions about the impending threat from the accused family.

Commissioner however clarified that the police force is being sensitised in how to handle such incidents and added that a majority of the accused were apprehended from the spot while those who flew the scene were held within 24 hours.

“Our mobile vans reached the spot in over two minutes which was a very good response time. Maximum accused were arrested from the spot at the same time we took care of the medical treatment (of the victim) and counselling of both her and the family,” Asthana revealed while interacting with the people of Delhi via Twitter on Thursday.

“We apprehended all the accused within 24 hours, which is numbering 11 now. Very soon we will be filing the charge sheet and we will also put in a request with the court to fast track this case,” he added.

During the interaction the Delhi Commissioner added that the key for his officials was to ensure that the 99.9 per cent of the population, who according to him are the law-abiding citizens, can go about doing their business without fearing the one percent of the criminals.

Asthana, who took over as commissioner last year, further said that his department is in the process of installing 10,000 cameras in Delhi, which will be connected to their integrated command and control centre.

“We are in the process of installing 10,000 cameras within six months and they will be connected to our integrated command and control centre. At the moment Delhi has over 2.5 lakh cameras installed by Delhi government, Delhi Police Stations and RWAs and market societies, all these will also be integrated with the command and control centre soon,” Asthana said.

Asthana further revealed that 81 police officers lost their lives while trying to help people of the city during the pandemic. “The pandemic has been very challenging for all of us. The police have never handled a situation like this ever but we still played a lead role as we shifted focus to ‘Pandemic policing’. We went into the seva mode and saw to it that facilities and resources reached the needy in time. We lost 81 of our officers and over 18,000 personnel got affected by the virus. We did not stop, we became the first responders in this crisis,” the commissioner said.

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