Consider posting securitymen at exit gates, HC tells DMRC

WEEKS AFTER a 21-year-old speech and hearing impaired girl went missing from Adarsh Nagar Metro station, the Delhi High Court has asked the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) to consider providing security personnel at the Automatic Fare Collection (AFC) exit gates.

The DMRC and Metro police will also have to submit an affidavit pertaining to all missing persons’ cases, said a bench of Justice Vipin Sanghi and Justice A K Pathak.

Counsel for Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) informed the court that as per CCTV footage, the missing woman exited the station without a ticket after tailgating with another passenger. After failing to exit two times, she was finally successful on the third attempt, said the counsel, underlining CISF’S primary responsibility to screen passengers and their luggage before entering Metro stations.

The DMRC said AFC exit gates were manned in stations, where there is heavy rush of passengers. It also said the sensors of the AFC gates were unable to detect if two persons exited the gate.

Senior standing counsel for Delhi Government, Rahul Mehra, said the speech and hearing impaired woman “shadowed along” with another person, and the machine allowed two people to exit at one time.

Had the machine allowed only one person to exit, the woman would have been within the confines of the Metro station. This posed larger security concerns, and from the perspective of citizen security, there had to be some Standard Operating Procedures (SOPS), which could be implemented by the DMRC, he said.

After The Indian Express had reported about the girl going missing, the Delhi High Court, taking cognizance of the news report, asked Delhi Police what it has done to trace the woman and asked them to file a status report.