November 2007 Edition
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Shailey Hingorani
New Delhi
ON 16 September, a 19-year-old student from the northeast crossed the street from her college, the Indraprastha College for Women (IP) in Delhi University, to buy medicines from a pharmacy. She was molested, verbally and physically, by a group of five young men who had congregated with another 600 to appear for an examination for recruitment of policemen and lower division clerks. The girl bore scratch marks on her neck. Two girl students, travelling in a rickshaw, were also attacked by these police hopefuls on the same day. Seven boys tried to pull out the girls from the rickshaw and when they weren’t successful, tried to board the moving vehicle themselves.
Street sexual violence on the campus is a daily reality. For years girls have requested better safety measures, but nobody has cared.Each girl is forced to fend for herself. Without any fear of the law, the campus has become a happy hunting ground for lascivious men with no decency. But these two incidents of street sexual violence finally sparked outrage. The girls decided they had had enough. In a remarkable show of strength, over 500 students, from different Delhi University Colleges, like IP College, Hindu, St. Stephen’s, Ramjas and Kirorimal led protests, demanding action against the culprits and a safer campus.
“I decided to go to the protest meetings because it could have easily been me in that situation. If I don’t support the girls today who willstand up to support me tomorrow?” said a 20-year-old student from IP College.“We should put an end to this harassment. All of us need to come together to show that we have had enough. And this sense of anger motivated me and my friends to participate,” said another student. The three girls who were molested, supported by their friends and teachers, decided to report these criminal incidents to the police. They met the Station House Officer (SHO) of the Mukherjee Nagar Police Station. The students say despite their insistence the SHO and two head constables of the police station didn’t register FIRs against the culprits and instead asked uncomfortable uestions. “We were assured by the SHO that such an incident wouldn’t happen again, but his assurance sounded hollow and that’s when we decided to march to the Vice-Chancellor, Deepak Pental’s Office,” said a student of IP College. The students met the Joint Commissioner of Police (Northern Region) PR Meena, to make sure that their demands were not just locked away into some dusty file.
The National Commission of Women (NCW) took note. It organised an emergency meeting with the Police Commissioner Y S Dadwal, Delhi University Vice-Chancellor Deepak Pental and Proctor Gurmeet Singh. The meeting discussed safety measures and the insensitivity shown by the constables at the Mukherjee Nagar Police Station. The two FIRs were registered only on the insistence of the NCW. The police then asked the victims to help them identify the culprits. How could the girls pick out the men from a sea of faces? The girls demanded nullification of the 16 September exam instead. “The police machinery is hardly effective against such harassment. We need to put pressure on the police and the Delhi government to pull up their socks and get their act together. We needed to send a strict message to them and we did that by collecting in hordes for the protest,” said Richa of IP College.
Students told Civil Society that their resolve to protest grew stronger when some policemen went to IP College and asked the girl students not to wear ‘provocative dresses’ to avoid molestation and harassment. “Ethnicity had no role to play in this. The girl student was attacked because she was a woman, not because she was from the northeast, not because of her attire, not because she was 20- years- old,” said Gauri of Delhi University. Students have demanded deployment of plainclothes policewomen, stricter punishment for policemen who refuse to register FIRs and an ID card for all workers deployed at the neighbouring metro stations for easy identification. Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit assured students that 500 women constables would be deployed on campus in addition to police personnel already present. Sunita Thakur, Senior Program Coordinator, Jagori, who was part of a team which conducted the Safe Delhi campaign across areas in the Capital, said, “If we need to make the city safe for women we need to improve urban infrastructure, including street lighting, signage, pavements, parks and services like helplines, medical centres and counselling facilities,” But finally none of this will work if the police are remiss. Harassment of women will end when tough action is taken quickly.
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