Chandigarh, December 19: Further scaling up the police pick-drop facility for women in distress, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh has ordered all-women PCR vans to be mobilised in five major cities of Punjab to provide safe transport in response to such calls.
PCRs rushing to help stranded women seeking to be dropped safely to their home/workplace will be manned entirely by women cops in Mohali, Amritsar, Patiala, Ludhiana and Jalandhar, in line with the Chief Minister’s orders.
This was announced here on Thursday by DGP Dinkar Gupta, who said that since the launch of the scheme to drop women safely home, 40 calls had been received on 100/112, 181 and 1091 helpline numbers between December 3 and 18.
He said 26 calls were received at 112/100, two at 181 and 12 calls were received on the districts 1091 helpline.
The Chief Minister had launched the scheme on December 3, amid growing concerns over safety of women, whereby free police help is provided to women stranded outside between 9 pm and 6 am. Women callers are connected immediately to the Police Patrolling Vehicles and Police Stations concerned as part of the pick-up and drop facility, available to women who do not have access to a safe vehicle, including taxi or three-wheeler.
The DGP said the minimum response time taken by Police Patrolling Parties to reach the caller was seven minutes and the maximum 30 minutes, averaging a total of 12 minutes. The police parties safely dropped callers at their place of residence/place where they wanted to go.
In majority of the cases, a woman police officer was present in the PCR, said the DGP, adding that the scheme is still in the initial stage and having some teething problems, which were being addressed. Once that is done, all PCR vans helping women in distress would have a woman cop, he added.
Though the scheme was officially announced for women stranded between 9 pm and 6 am, the DGP said the Chief Minister had personally directed the police to ensure support to any woman who feels unsafe at any time of the day. Acting on this directive, the Pathankot police had on December 5 helped out a woman who had called at around 8.05 pm by dropping her safely home.
Interestingly, there have been instances of passers-by also calling up the police helpline on spotting a woman alone at night. One such instance was reported on December 6 at 12.16 am, when one Dinesh called up 112 Helpline saying a woman was standing alone at Ladhowali Chubti Phatak, Jalandhar. The woman was dropped home by a PCR that reached the spot in 14 minutes with a woman ASI on board.
