Delhi Metro premises will soon see women commuters being frisked in total privacy as more than 200 new security cabins are being installed for them at the stations of the rapid transport system.
The fresh blue-coloured frisking booths are being procured by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) and women constables of the CISF will use them to frisk women passengers using the Delhi Metro. In the first phase, these booths will be installed in the Metro stations on the Blue Line (Dwarka Sector-21 to Vaishali/Noida City Centre) and subsequently they will placed at all other stations on the Metro network in the national capital region.
Close to 200 such boxes will be installed. "The new infrastructure is part of our enhanced measures to make Metro commuters comfortable and secure. Apart from these new women frisking booths, we have also introduced new mechanisms to fine tune Delhi Metro security services," CISF chief Arvind Ranjan told PTI.
The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) is the mandated security agency to secure the 134 stations of the Delhi Metro against any terror or sabotage attempts and it has deployed close to 5,000 men and women for this task.
Close to a dozen such booths have already started functioning and as compared to the previous cloth draped or hard-board made security boxes, these cabins ensure total privacy of the female passengers during frisking.
As part of the new protocols devised in the Delhi Metro by the CISF, security personnel have now begun a 'profiling' of commuters on the basis of which they are subjected to varied level of security checks. The force, as part of a month-old 'pilot' project to initiate these measures, has initially brought eight Metro stations under its purview.
As part of the new drill, the X-ray baggage screening machines at some select stations are now kept right next to the door-frame metal detectors where the commuters are frisked by CISF jawans. A security official explained that by this method, the CISF personnel right behind his colleague, who is frisking commuters, is able to clearly analyse the indicators of the metal detector and simultaneously also gives time to the personnel to intelligently profile a suspect.
Once the 'pilot' project reaches an optimum level and is seen to be successful, Ranjan said, more Metro stations would be brought under the new security protocols mechanism. Under this plan, the CISF has also deputed a select group of its personnel and officers who roam around in these select Metro stations talking to commuters about following few norms mandated for the security of passengers like making a queue while going for personal frisking and observance of rules on platforms.
Passengers at eight stations- Dwarka Sector 8, 12, 13 and 14, Yamuna Bank, Civil Lines, Vidhan Sabha and Race Course- are being urged to cooperate with the CISF personnel and urged to follow some routine courtesy and safety drills like standing behind the precautionary 'yellow line' when the train rolls in the station and allowing passengers to de-board first before hopping in.
The force is gearing up to the new measures as footfalls on the Delhi Metro are increasing everyday with close to 25 lakh people using the mass rapid rail network each day across stations spread in the national capital region including Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon and Faridabad.
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