Mass Molestation At Gargi College Is A Dark Reminder That Women In India Are Never Safe
A few days ago some students of Gargi College alleged that a handful of drunken men -- allegedly pro-CAA demonstrators -- had entered the colleges campus and misbehaved the students. The incident allegedly took place on the Day 3 of their annual fest Reverie. The men were allegedly shouting Jai Shri Ram slogans that made us presume they had Hindutva/BJP affiliation. Those who witnessed the episode are scared to come forward.
A few days ago, some students of Gargi College alleged that a handful of ¡°drunken men¡± -- allegedly pro-CAA demonstrators -- had entered the college¡¯s campus and misbehaved the students.
The incident allegedly took place on the Day 3 of their annual fest ¡®Reverie¡¯. The group of drunken men, said to be chanting ¡®Jai Shri Ram¡¯ slogans, entered the college and manhandled female students.
"Girls were groped, locked in washrooms, stalked to the nearby Green Park metro, cat-called, eve-teased and misbehaved with during the festival," read the blog of one of the students of Gargi College.
The blog added: "The men were allegedly shouting 'Jai Shri Ram' slogans that made us presume they had 'Hindutva/BJP' affiliation. We don't know how true this is as those who witnessed the episode are scared to come forward."
¡°A man began masturbating while looking at me¡±
The students were molested, sexually assaulted in their own college. A student, on the condition of anonymity, told ¡°around 6:30 pm on February 6, the field was so massively crowded that there was no space to move. Two of my friends who were accompanying me, they had held my hands so that I don't get lost in the crowd as there is no cell reception on the field. Suddenly immense pressure came from behind and my hand got jerked off so I lost my friends for the next 10-15 minutes, and in those minutes, I was molested thrice."
ANI
"I was groped thrice, somebody reached for inside my skirt and the problem was I couldn't move out of it," she said in a choked voice.
"Somehow I struggled and moved out and ran towards the empty space behind the stalls. By that time, I had found my friends, they looked at me horrified, but they didn't know what had happened to me as I didn't want to talk about it. So they went to get water, and would have been gone for just around 5 minutes, but in those five minutes I saw that a 30-35-year-old man began masturbating while looking at me, so I ran from there too," she added, narrating her ordeal.
¡°Men molested & harassed us¡±
Another student said that around 3-3.30pm, large group of men started pushing the doors and entered the college campus. The student narrated that there was no police presence or bouncers at the main entrance between 3pm to 4pm, when 300-400 people entered college.
"The college grounds are small, with little place to move around, and that is when some of these men started groping, molesting and harassing us," she told IANS.
Why aren¡¯t women safe?
The horror that unfolded on the fateful is difficult to imagine, but easy to believe, given the dismal state of women security in our country.
Making matters worse, this isn¡¯t the first time that such an incident took place at the Gargi college. The students have confessed that similar incidents took place last year as well during the college fest. A student said that no action was taken by the administration even such incidents were reported last year.
Another student claimed that last year the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) was dissolved and there was no platform to raise the issue.
"This is not the first time that such an incident has happened during the college fest. Similar instances of molestation and abuse happened in 2019 as well," recalled a student.
They said that the college authorities should have learnt from the last year incident and ensured safety but despite that, nothing was done.
Women safety in India is still a distant dream.
Delhi, which came to be known as the rape capital after the December 2012 rape case, saw a decline in crime against women for two straight years, with 13,076 FIRs being registered in 2017, down from 15,310 in 2016, and 17,222 in 2015, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data.
Despite the numbers, the larger pictures remain the same.
The eye-witness accounts narrate that though CRPF and Delhi Police personnel were deployed at the campus, they did little to control the mayhem that unleashed.
Though things have moved a little further and better for females, much has not changed in the last decade.