‘List steps taken to curb rising crimes against women in Tamil Nadu’

CHENNAI: Expressing concern that crimes against women had increased in the state, the Madras high court on Wednesday directed the government to report steps taken to curb offences.

A division bench of Justices

Huluvadi G Ramesh

and M Dhandapani made the observation on a public interest litigation (PIL) by advocate A P

Suryaprakasam

.

When the PIL came up for hearing, Suryaprakasam said, “Crimes against women is increasing and the government has filed a reply stating that steps are being taken to check such crimes. The measures taken by the government are not sufficient.”

Pointing out that the central government has created a separate ‘Nirbhaya Fund’ with a corpus of more than Rs 3,000 crore to be utilised by the state governments to curb atrocities against women, the advocate said, “Last week the central government allotted Rs 2,919 crore under

Nirbhaya fund

to eight cities including Chennai. It means special focus will be given for women’s safety in public places and quick response system will be set up to ensure deterrence against such crimes.”

The eight cities where these initiatives will take shape include Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Lucknow. Between 2013 and 2017, the corpus of Nirbhaya Fund has grown to Rs 3,100 crore.

Recording the submission, the bench said, offences of chain-snatching and murder of senior citizens for gain were also on the rise.

To this, the special government pleader submitted that the government was taking steps to curtail such incidents. But noting that such steps must include counselling of victims, the bench said, this court needs details of numbers of FIRs registered in such cases, status of investigation on those FIRs as on date and the measures taken to prevent such incidents.

The bench then posted the plea to June 6.