With trucks and buses, police offer last-mile fix

Read | Metro at standstill, life out of gear: 5,600 commuters stuck inside 2 trains

From noon to 2 pm, Mehrauli police station SHO Ved Prakash engaged a staff of 20 outside Qutub Minar Metro station. “I asked for three police buses, a commercial police truck, my own gypsy and a QRT gypsy to ferry people to Sultanpur. A police truck can ferry 60-80 people in one trip and each vehicle took around 10-15 trips. Our priority was senior citizens and women,” said Prakash. He recalled “chaos on the road” as people looked for autos, cabs, buses to take them to work, home, hospitals. “We boarded the women in police buses, and the men in the open mini-truck,” said Prakash.

SHO (Fatehpur Beri) Daleep Kumar deployed 35-40 police personnel outside Sultanpur Metro station and Chhattarpur Chowk from noon to 2.30 pm and found a solution in “lifts”.

“While there was a police tempo, we requested private vehicles to give a lift to women and senior citizens. Some were happy to help, others not so much. We had to resort to this as there was so much traffic that Metro feeder buses couldn’t reach,” said Kumar.