Arvind Kejriwal does Sheila act, accuses police of inaction

NEW DELHI: Once critical of then chief minister Sheila Dikshit for being unable to stop rapes in the capital, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday accused Delhi Police of not doing their job and demanded action against cops who ignored his ministers’ prompts.

“The Delhi Police is completely compromised and not doing their job. People are at the mercy of criminals and people will not remain mute spectators in case policing does not improve,” Kejriwal said at a press conference, flanked by ministers Rakhi Birla and Somnath Bharti.

The chief minister said he was serving an “ultimatum” that four policemen — two station house officers and two assistant commissioners — must be suspended for allegedly refusing to act despite being alerted by Birla and Bharti in two different cases.

Kejriwal’s criticism came close on the heels of the gangrape of a Danish woman near the New Delhi railway station on Tuesday. Earlier on Thursday, Delhi Congress president Arvinder Singh Lovely had said the government should answer as the incident happened in the chief minister’s constituency.

Kejriwal said crime and rape incidents will not go down if accountability of Delhi Police is not fixed.

“After a rape takes place, then we demand immediate arrest of the culprits. But that is not sufficient. Why would rapes happen in the first place?” he said. Delhi Police and law and order are under the domain of the Union home ministry and not the Delhi government.

Bharti, Delhi law minister, on Wednesday had asked the Police to take action against an alleged drug and prostitution racket involving nationals of Nigeria and Uganda in the Khirki village area.

Birla, the women and child development minister, had demanded action in an incident where a girl was allegedly set on fire by her in-laws and the police had allegedly failed to secure the scene of crime.