With the residential area behind the Mayur Vihar-I extension metro station dotted with several group housing societies having turned into a safe haven for petty criminals and ruffians, the local residents, especially young women, no longer feel safe while stepping out on the roads even in broad daylight.
In a recent incident, a teenaged girl from Glaxo Apartments was walking towards Samachar Apartments for her tuition classes around 4 p.m. when a Wagon-R car with tinted glass windows stopped a few metres ahead of her and its occupants tried to snatch her bag. Recalling the horrific incident, the girl said that as soon as she reached near the car the man in the front opened the door and tried to snatch her bag.
“But I managed to pull it back and ran straight inside a nearby housing society. There were four-five men in the car,” the girl said.
And it is not an isolated incident. The girl, who was lucky to have escaped unhurt in this incident, recalled how many of her friends had faced similar situations while going for their tuitions, returning home or walking to the bus stop in the morning. “It was not long ago when some young men threw empty liquor bottles at one of my friends. A little earlier, another friend of mine was waylaid. Three boys on a motorcycle tried to grab me just a few weeks ago,” the girl said, wondering why the Delhi Police never stop and interrogate boys and groups of men in cars and on motorcycles, who have no business to be in the area.
One Samachar Apartments resident said she would find empty liquor bottles and glasses strewn around in the nearby DDA Park every morning suggesting that ruffians frequented it late in the evening and consumed liquor there. “There are two liquor shops in a nearby mall and young men could be seen consuming liquor openly in their cars and at public places with their friends. They pose a serious security threat to the local residents, especially women”. A senior police officer said intensive patrolling was carried out in the area and claimed that they had not received any such complaints from the residents.
