In the wake of the rape of a call centre employee in the capital, Delhi Police issued an order making it mandatory for BPOs, corporates and media houses from today to drop their women employees at their homes during night hours and also confirm about their safe arrival.

Police also made it compulsory for the employers to ensure that a security guard accompanies the woman employee to her residence and ensure her safe arrival if the office vehicle cannot drop her outside her house.

The order was issued under Section 144 of CrPC and the employers violating the order are liable to be punished under Section 188 (disobedience of an official order) of IPC which entails an imprisonment of up to six months or a fine of Rs 1,000 or both.

"Certain criminal and anti-social elements look for soft targets, particularly during the odd hours and the women employees who travel during late night hours are vulnerable to crime by such elements if they are not dropped securely and safely at their places of stay," the order said. The order, however, did not define the night hours.

The order was issued as some of the employers have not "properly monitored" the cab operators hired for ferrying their workers, a senior police official said.

Delhi Police Commissioner B K Gupta had on December 2 said that women working in night shifts should be dropped at their homes and not at nearby streets.

A 30-year-old Mizo woman was abducted and raped by five men in south Delhi's Dhaula Kuan when she alighted from her office cab and was walking towards her house from the main road. Police had then said if the cab had stopped for a minute, she would have been saved.

According to the order, the cab driver involved in transportation of women employees drops them "right at their houses, remains halted at the point where a woman employee has been dropped till she confirms about her arrival at her residence through a telephone call".

Noting that there was a "mushrooming of BPOs, corporate and media houses in Delhi and other parts of the NCR providing employment to youth, the order said, that the employer should ensure that women workers were not made to travel alone with the cab driver and a security guard should be invariably deployed in each cab carrying them.

It has also asked employers to maintain a database of all employees, security personnel, cab drivers and contractual workers working with them for access by police besides hiring security personnel and other contractual personnel as far as possible from licensed agencies only.

Other points made mandatory for the employees include choosing the route in such a manner that woman employees was not the first one to be picked up or the last to be dropped.

The cab drivers should not pick any stranger or stray away from designated routes, the order said, adding the employer should instal GPS on their vehicles for easy tracking.