Women students march near DU’s south campus for safer public spaces

New Delhi: Hundreds of women students on Friday marched on the sidewalks of the Siri Fort Road near Delhi University’s South Campus on Friday evening, demanding safer public spaces and stringent action against sexual harassment, against the backdrop of the gangrape of a 17-year-old girl at Aastha Kunj Park earlier this week

New Delhi: Hundreds of women students on Friday marched on the sidewalks of the Siri Fort Road near Delhi University’s South Campus on Friday evening, demanding safer public spaces and stringent action against sexual harassment, against the backdrop of the gangrape of a 17-year-old girl at Aastha Kunj Park earlier this week.

Protesters were moved from the Siri Fort Road to Arun Jaitley Park at around 5pm on Friday. (HT Photo)

The gathering started the march at around 4pm from the gate of the Kamla Nehru College amid heavy police deployment, and after an hour, protesters were moved to DDA’s Arun Jaitley Park to avoid traffic disruption. There, they continued the protest for another hour.

Protesters said that while rape is an extreme form of violence against women, they also wanted an end to stalking, and the inappropriate recording of women in public spaces by strangers, which they alleged were “behaviours that are often ignored”.

Nineteen-year-old Namrata Kanwar, a protester from Chandigarh, said, “I was travelling in the metro, and there was a middle-aged man who stood next to me and started recording me. I only found that out later, when he turned and did that to another passenger. I was shocked. It was just my second month of living in Delhi and I didn’t know how to call him out in public.”

“It takes a crime as big as rape for everyone to wake-up,” Kanwar said.

Another student, requesting anonymity, said she has spent the past few days assuring her parents that she is safe and dissuading them from asking her to return home.

“The number of calls I get from home have increased significantly after the recent gangrape incident. Every day, I have to assure my parents that I have returned home, and that I was inside my PG by 7pm,” the student, who moved to Delhi from Uttar Pradesh, said.

An undergraduate student from Gargi College, requesting anonymity, said, “I was constantly getting calls from my mother, and she kept scolding me, questioning why these protests not organised during the day time... I wanted to stay for longer and go inside the park as the police were also there, but dropped the plan due to my mother’s concerns”.