By IANS,
New Delhi : The Delhi Metro has penalised almost 300 men travelling in Delhi Metro’s coaches reserved for women, collecting over Rs.70,000 in fines in the last one week, an official said Tuesday.
“In past one week, we carried out special surprise checks and we penalised about 295 male passengers for unlawful entry into coach reserved for women and fines worth Rs.73,750 have been collected,” a Delhi Metro official said.
The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) reserved the first coach of every train for women from Oct 2, 2010. Initially a fine of Rs.200 was imposed men found flouting the law. This was increased to Rs.250 following the Nov 25, 2010 incident when several male passengers travelling in a women’s coach were thrashed by police.
According to DMRC, the special drive was conducted by DMRC following the complaint of women commuters about men entering into women’s coach.
“We conducted a special surprise check about eleven special flying squads, comprising a station manager, Delhi Metro Rail police staff, security controller and two security guards, to keep a tab on all six lines of the Delhi Metro since Friday,” a DMRC official said.
About 119 men were penalised on Dilshad Garden to Rithala metro stretch, 83 was penalised on the HUDA City Centre to Jahangirpuri stretch, 53 on the Noida City Centre-Dwarka Sector 21 stretch and 40 men were penalised at Central Secretariat to Badarpur line, a DMRC official informed.
Presently, around 450,000 women passengers take the Metro every day on weekdays while on the weekends the number is 325,000.
Delhi Metro makes over 2,400 trips a day, covering about 70,000 km and carrying around 1.8 million passengers on working days.