'Painful parallels to Nirbhaya': SC takes suo motu note of Delhi-NCR rape cases

New Delhi: Supreme Court on Monday took suo motu cognisance of recent rape and sexual assault cases in the National Capital Region, expressing concern over what it termed the failure of law enforcement and public authorities to ensure basic public safety and drawing "painful parallels" to the 2012 Nirbhaya incident.

A bench of justices JB Pardiwala and K Vinod Chandran directed the court registry to register a public interest litigation on the issue. The bench took note of recent incidents, including the alleged gangrape of a 17-year-old girl at Aastha Kunj Park near Kalkaji in Southeast Delhi, the alleged gangrape and murder of a teenager in Swarup Nagar and the alleged sexual assault of a minor inside a sleeper bus travelling from Greater Noida to Delhi.

"One cannot help but draw painful parallels to the Nirbhaya incident of 2012," the bench observed, questioning whether law enforcement mechanisms had made meaningful progress since the incident that shook the country.


The court said the recent incidents, considered alongside other reports of sexual offences across Delhi-NCR, "starkly underline a systematic failure" on the part of law enforcement and public administrative authorities to guarantee basic public safety.

The bench said expressing solidarity with victims was not enough and stressed the need to fix accountability for failures that contributed to such incidents. The right to live with dignity and without fear of violence is an intrinsic facet of the right to life guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution, the court said.

Public spaces cannot be allowed to become "zones of high risk" because of inadequate illumination, poor surveillance, lack of patrolling or other preventable administrative deficiencies, it said.

The court specifically referred to the alleged sexual assault of a minor on a bus that travelled nearly 47 km from Greater Noida to Delhi before the girl was allegedly abandoned near Kashmere Gate in North Delhi on August 4. The police has arrested the bus driver and conductor. In the Aastha Kunj incident on September 21, the accused allegedly assaulted the 17-year-old after posing as cops.

The court's intervention comes nearly 14 years after the December 2012 gangrape and murder of a 23-year-old woman on a moving bus in Delhi triggered nationwide protests and led to significant changes in the criminal law relating to sexual offences. The bench said the recurrence of sexual violence in public spaces raised serious questions about preventive mechanisms.