Mumbai: The Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence awarded by the Delhi High Court to all the four convicts in the barbaric rape and murder of para-medic Nirbhaya who was traveling in a bus on fateful night of December 16, 2012 with her friend who was also thrashed.
In the aftermath of the brutal incident, people took to the streets, took out candle light marches and protested in solidarity with the 23-year-old girl who later succumbed in Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.
Faced with vociferous demonstrations and massive outcry from public, the then Dr Manmohan Singh government started Nirbhaya Fund as a tribute to the young victim and many other women who fall prey to brutal violence.
Here are a few things that you should know about the Nirbhaya Fund.
1) The Rs 1,000 crore Nirbhaya Fund was announced in Union Budget 2013 by the then Finance Minister P Chidambaram. The corpus was to be utilised for upholding safety and dignity of women.
2) Ministry of Women and Child Development apart from several other concerned ministries were authorised to work out details of structure, scope and application of this fund.
3) The Fund is administered by Department of Economic Affairs of the finance ministry. Presently, Shaktikanta Das is heading Department of Economic Affairs as its secretary.
4) Many ministries including Ministry of Information Technology, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and Ministry of Railways have proposed various ways and causes for use of Nirbhaya funds.
5) Ministry of Urban Development had asked all state governments to work out new plans that can be financed through Nirbhaya Fund in November 2013. The ministry had told states, Union Territories that they will not get their quota of buses under JNNURM if they failed to put in place a proper safety for women mechanism in their urban transport system.
