By Sanjay Raman Sinha
Thirteen years after the horrific Nirbhaya tragedy, Delhi and the National Capital Region have witnessed another chilling reminder that the moving bus remains an unsafe space for women and children.
On the night of August 4, a 16-year-old student from Mainpuri was allegedly gang-raped inside a moving bus by its driver and conductor. The minor had boarded an apparently empty public sleeper bus at Pari Chowk in Greater Noida. She was allegedly sexually assaulted inside the vehicle as it travelled towards Delhi. Her ordeal continued through the 47-km journey before she was dropped in the Kashmere Gate police station area.
Both the accused have been arrested.
Forensic examination has confirmed that the CCTV system inside the bus was not functional. The National Human Rights Commission has taken suo motu cognisance of the incident and sought a report from the police.
The case has also prompted a wider legal intervention. RJD MP Sudhakar Singh has filed a letter petition before Chief Justice Surya Kant, seeking suo motu cognisance under Article 21. The petition has clubbed the bus assault with the sexual assault of a minor boy in Maujpur, Delhi. The two incidents, occurring within a fortnight in August, have revived a question India has confronted repeatedly since Nirbhaya: Why does a formidable legal framework continue to coexist with such glaring failures of prevention and enforcement?
The answer may lie less in the absence of laws than in the weakness of the machinery meant to make those laws work.
It was on December 16, 2012, that the Nirbhaya incident shook the nation and smote its conscience. The brutal sexual assault of a young woman in a moving bus in Delhi triggered an unprecedented public outcry. But it also exposed institutional failures that went far beyond the crime itself—unsafe public transport, inadequate policing, weak victim-support mechanisms and deficiencies in investigation and prosecution.
The government responded by appointing the Justice JS Verma Committee, which submitted its report in January 2013. Its recommendations represented a sweeping examination of the legal and institutional architecture surrounding sexual violence.
The Committee recommended redefining rape to encompass all non-consensual sexual acts. It called for the criminalisation of stalking, voyeurism and sexual harassment, stronger provisions relating to acid attacks, immediate registration of FIRs and greater police accountability. It also addressed the political system, recommending disqualification of politicians facing serious sexual-assault charges.
But the Committee’s concern extended beyond criminal law. It placed particular emphasis on the safety of women in public spaces and public transport.
The public transit system, it argued, had to be capable of operating safely around the clock. Its recommendations envisaged tamper-proof GPS systems and CCTV cameras for real-time oversight, trained security personnel and emergency mechanisms capable of connecting victims rapidly with the police.
Thirteen years later, the most disturbing fact about the latest incident may, therefore, be that a basic technological safeguard—CCTV inside a public bus—was simply not functioning.
The problem is not that India has done nothing since Nirbhaya. It has done much. But the gap between policy and practice remains painfully visible.
India significantly strengthened its laws protecting children from sexual violence after the Nirbhaya movement. The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, was amended in 2019, including provisions introducing the death penalty for aggravated sexual assault of minors and strengthening the system of special courts. The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which replaced the Indian Penal Code in 2024, has retained a stringent approach: Section 70(2) provides for death or imprisonment for life without parole for gang rape of a minor.
The institutional response has also expanded. The Nirbhaya Fund was created specifically to support initiatives aimed at improving women’s safety. Of the Rs 7,712.85 crore allocated through 2024-25, about 76 per cent had been utilised. The money has supported emergency response systems, fast track special courts, city safety initiatives, forensic laboratories and transport-security measures.
The basic architecture, therefore, exists. What remains inadequate is the administrative will and capacity to connect that architecture to everyday life.
Delhi has continued to record among the highest levels of crime against women when compared with India’s major cities. Women’s mobility after dark remains constrained by fear and by the absence of a sufficiently reassuring security ecosystem. Public policy and transport planning have struggled to address the particular vulnerabilities of women travelling at night, while policing has yet to create a sufficiently dense and dependable safety net.
The latest bus case demonstrates how quickly that safety net can unravel.
A public transport vehicle is not merely a means of getting from one place to another. Once a passenger boards it, the State assumes a heightened responsibility to ensure that the vehicle is identifiable, monitored and operated by accountable personnel.
That requires rigorous background verification and identification of drivers, conductors and other personnel. GPS and CCTV systems must not merely be installed; they must be regularly audited to ensure that they are functional. Vehicles should be subject to random checks. Ground patrols need to be strengthened along vulnerable routes and at vulnerable hours.
Most importantly, there must be a clear and enforceable Standard Operating Procedure for responding when a crime occurs.
Evidence can disappear quickly. CCTV footage and GPS and location data must, therefore, be preserved immediately. Forensic evidence must receive equal priority, alongside rigorous medical examination. At the same time, vulnerable victims must be protected from intimidation and secondary trauma while ensuring that their testimony can be recorded and preserved reliably.
Policing remains indispensable, but policing alone cannot solve the problem.
Women’s security must also become part of urban planning itself. The design of roads, bus stops, transit corridors, lighting, surveillance networks and emergency response systems must be informed by actual patterns of vulnerability. Security cannot be an afterthought added once an incident has occurred.
The Nirbhaya tragedy produced laws, institutions, funds and promises. The latest incident produces a more uncomfortable question: What happens when all those safeguards exist on paper but the camera inside the bus does not work?
That is the real test of the post-Nirbhaya era.
India does not necessarily need another law every time a horrific crime occurs. It needs the laws and infrastructure already created to work relentlessly, every day, especially in those ordinary spaces where women and children have no choice, but to place their safety in the hands of the system.
Thirteen years after Nirbhaya, the lesson is stark. Justice after a crime is essential. But the real measure of a safety regime is whether it can prevent the next Nirbhaya.
Rape jurisprudence since Nirbhaya
- Lillu vs State of Haryana (2013): Outlawed the invasive “two-finger test” on rape survivors, holding that it violates their privacy and dignity.
• Mukesh vs State (NCT of Delhi) (2017): Upheld the death penalty for the Nirbhaya convicts, reinforcing that extreme brutality against women meets the “rarest of rare” standard.
• Alakh Alok Srivastava vs Union of India (2018): Directed High Courts to set up specialized, fast-track courts to ensure POCSO trials complete within the statutory one-year deadline.
• Nipun Saxena vs Union of India (2019): Strictly banned disclosing the identities of sexual assault survivors across police, media, and court records.
• State of Jharkhand vs Shailendra Kumar Rai (2022): Reaffirmed the total ban on the “two-finger test” and warned that anyone conducting it would be held guilty of misconduct.
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