New Delhi, The gang rape of a 17-year-old girl at Aastha Kunj Park in southeast Delhi’s Kalkaji area has highlighted safety and maintenance issues concerning the sprawling 142-acre green space and other such DDA parks, with residents and local RWAs flagging poor lighting, broken sections of the boundary walls and inadequate security.
“One of the biggest issues is that these are huge parks, which are under DDA, but there is no proper ownership. The recent incident has highlighted the problem. If the DDA is unable to properly upkeep these parks, it should let locals come together and form neighbourhood park safety committees, with members from Residents’ Welfare Associations , police officials and others,” Ruby Makhija, secretary of Navjiwan RWA. It has led to scrutiny of security arrangements at the DDA-maintained park, particularly after dark, as well as the monitoring of its multiple entry and exit points.
In the recent incident, the survivor, a resident of Faridabad, was allegedly gang raped by three men posing as police personnel at the park on Monday.
“The facts emerging from the investigation raise fundamental questions about DDA’s management of one of Delhi’s major public parks. If DDA needs outside agencies or adoption models to maintain parks effectively, why has it not established a consistently effective system of basic security and maintenance within parks under its direct jurisdiction?”
