New Delhi: The Supreme Court today took suo motu cognisance of recent cases of rape in Delhi, including a gangrape in a park and allegations of sexual assault of a minor inside a moving sleeper bus in Delhi.LiveLaw reports that a bench of Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice K. Vinod Chandran observed that they were distressed by the news reports regarding recurring sexual offences in the National Capital Region, were reminded of the 2012 gangrape and murder in Delhi, and stressed the need to fix accountability.The bench specifically referred to the case where a 16-year-old girl’s body, partially eaten by dogs, was found in a decomposed and unidentifiable state in an open field in Delhi’s Swaroop Nagar on September 13, two days after her alleged rape and murder.The bench also spoke of the gangrape of another 16-year-old in a moving sleeper bus during its travel of 47 kilometres from Greater Noida to Delhi. The driver and conductor were later arrested.The Supreme Court said that “one cannot help but draw painful parallels to the Nirbhaya incident of 2012.”“These incidents considered alongside other recent reports of sexual offences across Delhi-NCR starkly underline a systematic failure on the part of the law enforcement and the public administrative authorities to guarantee basic public safety,” the bench said.It also said that public parks, buses, metro stations, subways, footbridges, cannot be permitted to become “zones of high risk” due to grossly inadequate illumination, poor surveillance, lack of patrolling and other preventable administrative deficiencies.“Expressions of solidarity devoid of accountability fall short of answering the larger institutional question. Expressing solidarity is not a solution to this social evil. What is required is a measurable response with the responsibility and accountability fixed upon authorities entrusted with the prevention of crimes, maintenance of public order and protection of vulnerable persons,” the bench observed.