Supreme Court emphasizes need to deter crimes against women

The Supreme Court on Monday (October 5, 2026) said there was a need to create fear in the minds of goons committing crimes against women, while noting there was a feeling that women were not safe in the city, particularly in some vulnerable pockets.

The Court made the remarks while hearing a suo motu case over recent rape cases in Delhi-NCR. “We have to work together. We must ensure that every woman in Delhi-NCR should feel safe even at 11 p.m., whether travelling on the roads or the metro,” a Bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and K. Vinod Chandran said.

“What is important is to prevent a crime, not what you do after a crime is committed,” the Bench said, adding that the police needed to create fear in the minds of goons and anti-social elements prone to committing such crimes.

The Bench, which was hearing the suo motu case titled ‘In Re: Recent Rape Incidents in Delhi NCR’, observed that “rape is something which is not at all acceptable to any society.”

The Court had, on September 28, 2026, taken suo motu cognisance of news reports about crimes against minor girls and women across Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR), observing that such cases underlined a systemic failure on the part of law enforcement authorities.

The Court took cognisance of the alleged gang rape of a 17-year-old girl at Aastha Kunj Park in Delhi, the gang rape and murder of a teenage girl in the Swaroop Nagar area of Delhi, and the sexual assault of a minor girl inside a moving sleeper bus, which law enforcement agencies failed to intercept while it travelled more than 47 km from Greater Noida to Delhi.