| The crime, the Covid, the politics and the potholes: Capital Letters — Keeping track of Delhi's week, one beat at a time, through the eyes and words of HT's My Delhi section, with all the perspective, context and analysis you need. Good morning! A decade after the December 16 gang-rape and murder of a 23-year-old medical student aboard a moving bus, what has Delhi as a city and what have we as a people learnt? The crime not only jolted India to its very bones and offered difficult questions about women’s safety (and depravity), but also cast a deservedly harsh light on the national capital and the robustness of its basic public mechanisms – transport, policing, commuter and pedestrian infrastructure and general administrative attitudes. Laws have changed, money has been spent, the police say they are more alert and receptive to complaints of sexual violence. But are these changes evident in praxis? To find out, HT’s Hemani Bhandari took the same trip that the 23-year-old woman did that night. Regular commuters and vendors at the stop in south Delhi’s Munirka, where the woman boarded the bus, said little has changed at that spot itself - except for the Metro station, which was opened in May 2018, roughly six-and–a-half years after the incident that shook Delhi. On December 16, 2012, around 9.30pm, the woman and a friend of hers waited long for a bus to go back home to Dwarka. Tired of not finding a government bus, the two boarded a private bus. The lights at the bus stop are still patchy, and HT found that just one of the four tubelights was working during a visit last week.  The bus stand in Munirka where the medical student and her friend boarded the bus on December 16, 2012. Credit: Sanjeev Verma/HT Photo However, the police presence is visibly better at the high-profile spot, with vendors and shopkeepers affirming that patrol cars and motorcycles are a routine sight in and around the Munirka bus stop. Police officers at the spot admitted that ever since that fateful evening, the intense gaze on the neighbourhood has resulted in stricter patrolling. HT got onto a bus at the stop around 9.30pm, headed for Dwarka. Aboard the bus, the picture was quite grim - there were no marshals, despite a 2015 government order mandating as much, and iffy security mechanisms (like CCTV cameras, alert buttons, and so on). And the bus had few women. An aside - buses themselves on the route at that hour are few and far between. It's strange that Delhi still hasn’t found a fix for this. Buses are Delhi’s most popular public transport option (the Metro is a distant second), but the city has far fewer buses than it needs. The city needs at least 11,000 buses to meet its ever-burgeoning demand, but has just about 7,000, a vast majority of which are rickety and well past their use-by date. To worsen matters, 30% of the Nirbhaya Fund, set up in the aftermath of December 16, has been unutilised. The fund was carved out to help states better implement policies designed to keep women safe. From its inception till 2021-22, the total allocation under the fund has been over ₹6,000 crore, of which ₹4,200 crore has been utilised, said officials aware of the matter. A decade from now, where will we stand? Will we have learnt anything at all? Will the lights and the CCTV cameras work? Will the Nirbhaya Fund be spent, and spent better? Will there be more buses at night? Will they be policed properly? Stalker attacks minor girl with acid Roughly a decade after the above incident, a 17-year-old girl was on her way to school with her younger sister when two men on a motorcycle threw acid on her face in west Delhi’s Mohan Garden on Wednesday -- an incident that was caught on CCTV and sparked outrage among citizens, activists, and political leaders across the spectrum. The prime suspect (three people have been arrested so far) began stalking the girl three months ago, and she kept rebuffing his advances, said police officers and the girl’s family members. According to doctors in Safdarjung Hospital, where she is being treated, the girl suffered 8% burns. The injuries were superficial, they said, but added that they are examining if the 17-year-old lost her vision. Where did the men get the acid, the sale of which is banned? Flipkart. A breakthrough in the Mehrauli murder The Delhi Police last week said DNA from bones they found in Mehrauli and Gurugram matched with Shraddha Walkar’s father, confirming the 27-year-old woman’s death and giving investigators the first major breakthrough in a case that so far stunned Delhi, but thrown up little by way of incontrovertible proof. If you didn’t already know (somehow), 28-year-old Aaftab Poonawala allegedly murdered his girlfriend Walkar in their rented flat in south Delhi’s Chhattarpur Pahadi. According to the police, he then dismembered the body into dozens of pieces and disposed of them in forests around his house. The development, police hope, should be the first of many such, with officers awaiting the forensic reports of blood samples and weapons found in their flat still awaited. Officers also said the results of the narco and polygraph tests Poonawala underwent will help the police tighten their case. However, investigators were quick to advise caution - the DNA report has only confirmed Walkar’s death (and that the body parts were cut up with a sharp weapon). The police still have to pin the murder on Poonawala. So far, all they have to go by are statements from Poonawala himself, and testimonies from their friends and acquaintances - all of whom confirmed a sordid tale of abuse, harassment and toxicity. The curious tale of the dog On Wednesday evening, three men stormed into a house in Greater Noida. They tried to make away with a Dogo Argentino (a dog breed native to Argentina) that lived in the house. This dognap bid failed when a resident of the house stepped in. So, the three men just kidnapped that man instead and left. Later that day, they called the house and asked for ransom. Their demand? The Dogo Argentino. | 
