Zee Media Bureau/Supriya Jha
New Delhi: It`s been one year since the spine-chilling incident of Nirbhaya gang-rape that stirred millions of souls, rousing the countrymen out of apathy forcing them to take to streets to protest. However, the government seems to retain its state of inertia as the Rs 1000-crore fund that was announced by the government in March this year to mend the women safety scenario, remains largely unused, say reports.
Lashing out at the government for inaction over the Rs 1000-crore fund, Aam Aadmi Party member Shazia Ilmi tweeted that it was a shame that the fund had remained unused even after a year of the brutal gang-rape incident.
Nirbhaya Fund is lying unused. Not a single step taken so far. Shameful.
— shazia ilmi (@shaziailmi) December 15, 2013
Nirbhaya was at the receiving end of bestial atrocity meted out by six people in a moving bus on the sinister night of December 16 and had died on Dec 29 in a Singapore hospital.
After the heinous act haunted the nation`s conscience, and a sea of humanity erupted in protest on streets across the nation, the government was forced to take some steps that ended in amending rape laws.
Also, Finance Minister P Chidambaram, while presenting the Union Budget in the Lok Sabha this year in March, had announced the setting up of the Nirbhaya Fund worth Rs 1,000 crore as a tribute to the Delhi braveheart.
"I request the Ministry of Women and Child development to plan structure, scope and application of this fund….Recent incidents have cast a shadow on women’s safety. It is our collective responsibility to ensure dignity and safety of women," Chidambaram had said.
However one long year has passed by and there has been little action on part of the government to utilise the funds, say reports.
