On 6 February 2020, at around 6:30 pm, a group of intoxicated men entered the campus of Gargi College, a women's college affiliated to University of Delhi. The incidents happened during the annual cultural fest of the college, Reverie. [1] Reportedly, some students were sexually assaulted by members of the mob. It was also reported that some of the men masturbated in front of the female students. [2]
An FIR was registered by the principal of Gargi College three days later. [3] A fact-finding committee was created by the college administration to gather relevant information on the incidents. [4]
The Delhi Police said an inspector of Crime Against Women (CAW) Cell was designated as the investigation officer in the case and the Additional DCP of South Delhi was designated as the inquiry officer. [5] Police arrested 10 suspects on 12 February 2020, and two more 13 February 2020. [6] [7] Police later arrested five more suspects, bringing the number of arrests to seventeen as of 18 February 2020. [8] On 14 February 2020, the initial ten accused were released on bail. [9]
The annual cultural fest of Gargi College was scheduled to hold from 4 to 6 February 2020. On 6 February 2020, the final day, a music concert was organised for which playback singer Jubin Nautiyal was invited to perform. [10] The crowd began to form around 3:30 pm around both gates of the campus. Entry was scheduled to close after 4:30 pm. Since the college is a women's college, men are only allowed to enter with passes. Reportedly the gates remained open for a longer time and identifications and passes were not properly checked for the men's entry. Some reports say that the gate was not damaged at first, an administration official had opened the gates to give entry to a car, and many people rushed inside. The influx of the crowd continued for hours. It was reported that 5,000 to 10,000 individuals gathered in and around the campus. [11] According to organisers, the expected crowd was around 6000, 3000 college students and around 3000 more through entry passes. [12]
According to the eye-witnesses' testimonies and social media posts, the mob entered around 6:30 pm. One report said that the men were middle-aged and came in trucks. [2] Students said that those men did not appear to be students, and some reports claimed the men were returning from a pro-CAA rally who were shouting "Jai Shri Ram". [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] This mob destroyed the campus gates, and some of them climbed over the walls and damaged students' vehicles. The men walked around drunk and shirtless. They brought with them alcohol, cigarettes and weed. [18] They assaulted women and chased them. One student told NDTV that she wanted to report verbal harassment to the Proctor but she could not as signal jammers were installed for the fest. [19] Some students noted that the incursion appeared to be planned, as some of the men carried eggs and threw them at the students. [12]
One student said the crowd was "massive" and she was unable to move out and had to stay inside the campus for 40 minutes. When she went out in an open space, one of the men started masturbating at her. As soon as she escaped, a first-year student ran to her and said that a group of five or six men appeared to be attempting to surround her. [20] Some of the students posted on social media that they were followed to their hostels and accommodations, and some were followed to the metro station when they left the campus. [21]
The students alleged that college security personnel were present and when they observed the incidents, they did not intervene, even when specifically asked to do so. [19]
The Economic Times reported that the Rapid Action Force (RAF) and Delhi Police personnel were stationed close to the entrance of the campus from where the mob entered the college. Students said the RAF and police personnel did nothing. [18]
The incident came to mainstream media when students posted narrations of their experiences in Instagram . Around 100 students protested outside the gate of the college from 10 February until 16 February 2020, sitting for dharna from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. to demand an apology from the college principal, assurance of a safe campus and action against the perpetrators. They alleged that even after the incidents were brought to the notice of the college management, they did not take any necessary steps. [18] [22] [23] Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA) supported the students and joined the protest. [22] [23]
Some of the students who were harassed complained to the principal and others. The principal, Dr. Kumar was reportedly heard saying, "Why come to the fests, if you do not feel safe." [18] The students' Union blamed the administration and called the Principal's statement "infuriating and appalling". [24] A girl stated, "It was scary and traumatic, and the administration refused to help." [18]
The Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) Chief, Swati Maliwal interviewed some of the students and asked the Principal Dr. Kumar to appear before the commission. [25]
The National Commission for Women (NCW) also sent investigators. The NCW Chairperson, Rekha Sharma said that she had read about the molestations on social media and sent a team to talk with the principal and also to the Delhi Police. [19]
On 10 February 2020, after three days of the incidents, Dr. Promila Kumar, the principal of Gargi College, made a complaint at the Hauz Khas Police Station. [4] A FIR was registered and the case was lodged under sections 452 (trespass), 354 (assault or criminal force intend to outrage modesty of women) and 509 (criminal intimidation) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of Indian Penal Code. [3]
Also on 10 February 2020, the DCP of South Delhi stated that a police inspector of the Crime Against Women (CAW) Cell had been designated as investigation officer in the case while the Additional DCP of South Delhi, Geetanjali Khandelwal, would oversee the investigation. [4] On 12 February 2020, the Commissioner of Police (South Delhi), Atul Kumar Thakur stated that 11 teams of Delhi Police were working on the case. Police collected evidence and statements from witnesses and scanned CCTV footage from the cameras at the college gate to get evidence. [1] CCTV footage revealed that some of the men broke the college gate to gain access, while some jumped over barricades. The security team at the gate was outnumbered by the mob. [6] Some suspects were identified using this footage. [26] [6]
On 13 February 2020, a lawyer filed a PIL in the Supreme Court, seeking a court-monitored Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) inquiry into the alleged molestation and sought arrest of the perpetrators behind the "planned criminal conspiracy". The petitioner told the court that it could be a "criminal conspiracy hatched by the political party" and raised concerns that the electronic evidence could be destroyed. In response, the top court said that the Delhi High Court can pass an order for the authorities to preserve the evidence. Though the court had refused to entertain the petition and directed the petitioner to move the same to the Delhi High Court. [27] [28] Thus the PIL moved to the High Court, where the court has agreed to hear the petition and listed for hearing on 17 February 2020. [27]
On 12 February 2020, Delhi Police said that 30 suspects were identified and arrested ten students in connection to the alleged assaults. [29] [30] The police stated that the accused were for the most part local university students. [6] A day later, police arrested two more people. [31] [32] On 14 February, the initial ten accused were granted bail by a Delhi court and were released on a surety of रु 10,000 each. [33] Police said the CCTV footage that they have only establishes the arrested persons "barging into the college premises by damaging a gate" but not their involvement in molestation. [9]
The police arrested one more person on 16 February [34] and two on 18 February, for a total of seventeen arrests. [8]
Chief Minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal condemned the misbehavior with the women students and tweeted that the incident was "extremely unfortunate" and the accused must be brought to justice. Deputy CM of Delhi, Manish Sisodia called the incidents as "disgusting". Sisodia mentioned in his tweet that "fests are opportunities to celebrate the cultural diversity" but "anti-social elements saw this fest as another chance to inflict harassment and violence on students". [35] BJP chief, Manoj Tiwari tweeted that the incident is highly condemnable and culprits should be apprehended immediately. [1]
Delhi Congress president Subhash Chopra said that he was "anguished by the Gargi college incident". He tweeted that it is "sorrowful that the girl students are not safe in their own college in the national capital". He also mentioned in his tweet that "highly shameful that Delhi Police silently watched the atrocities against women." [1] [18]
During the Question Hour of Lok Sabha in response to fellow MP, Gaurav Gogoi's question, HRD Minister of India, Ramesh Pokhriyal said the perpetrators were from outside and were not students and said that the college administration was advised to take action into the matter. [36]
Jadavpur University is a public state university with its main campus located in Jadavpur, Kolkata, West Bengal, India. It was established in 1906 as Bengal Technical Institute and was converted into Jadavpur University in 1955. As of 2023 NIRF rankings, Jadavpur University has been ranked 4th among universities, 10th among engineering institutes, and 13th overall in India.
In India, eve teasing is a euphemism, primarily occurring in English, used for public sexual harassment or sexual assault of women by men. The name "Eve" alludes to the Bible's creation story concerning Adam and Eve. Considered a problem related to delinquency in male youth, it is a form of sexual aggression that ranges in severity from sexually suggestive remarks, brushing in public places and catcalls, to groping.
Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) (transl. All India Students' Council) is a right-wing all India student organisation affiliated to the Hindu nationalist organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh is an Indian politician who is serving as Member of Parliament from Kaiserganj as a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party. He was the president of the Wrestling Federation of India.
Ethnic relations in India have historically been complex. India is ethnically diverse, with more than 2,000 different ethnic groups. There is also significant diversity within regions, and almost every state and several districts has its own distinct mixture of ethnicities, traditions, and culture. Throughout the history of India, ethnic relations have been both positive and negative.
Rape is the fourth most common crime against women in India. According to the 2021 annual report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), 31,677 rape cases were registered across the country, or an average of 86 cases daily, a rise from 2020 with 28,046 cases, while in 2019, 32,033 cases were registered. Of the total 31,677 rape cases, 28,147 of the rapes were committed by persons known to the victim. The share of victims who were minors or below 18 – the legal age of consent – stood at 10%.
Gargi College is one of the top colleges affiliated to the University of Delhi. It was established in the year 1967 and offers education in Arts and Humanities, Commerce, Science and Education for women. Gargi College has been honoured with Star College Status by Department of Biotechnology, Government of India.
The 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder, commonly known as the Nirbhaya case, involved a rape and fatal assault that occurred on 16 December 2012 in Munirka, a neighbourhood in South Delhi. The incident took place when Jyoti Singh, a 22-year-old physiotherapy intern, was beaten, gang-raped, and tortured in a private bus in which she was travelling with her male friend, Avnindra Pratap Pandey. There were six others in the bus, including the driver, all of whom raped the woman and beat her friend. She was rushed to Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi for treatment and transferred to Singapore eleven days after the assault, where she succumbed to her injuries 2 days later. The incident generated widespread national and international coverage and was widely condemned, both in India and abroad. Subsequently, public protests against the state and central governments for failing to provide adequate security for women took place in New Delhi, where thousands of protesters clashed with security forces. Similar protests took place in major cities throughout the country. Since Indian law does not allow the press to publish a rape victim's name, the victim was widely known as Nirbhaya, meaning "fearless", and her struggle and death became a symbol of women's resistance to rape around the world.
Rape in Egypt is a criminal offense with penalties ranging from 15 to 25 years and a lifetime sentence if the rape included abduction. Marital rape is legal. By 2008, the U.N. quoted Egypt's Interior Ministry's figure that 20,000 rapes take place every year, although according to the activist Engy Ghozlan (ECWR), rapes are 10 times higher than the stats given by Interior Ministry, making it 200,000 per year. Mona Eltahawy has also noted the same figure (200,000), and added that this was before the revolution.
The Hok Kolorob Movement or the 2014 Jadavpur University student protest, was a four-month long series of protests by the students of Jadavpur University in Kolkata, India that began on 3 September 2014. The term "Hok Kolorob" was originally the title of a song by Bangladeshi singer Arnob, written by Rajib Ashraf, and began to be used as a hashtag on Facebook.
The Campus Front of India (CFI) is the student/campus wing of the banned Islamist organization, the Popular Front of India. CFI was launched at New Delhi on November seventh at the National Students Convention 2009. The founder and president was Muhammad Yusuff from Tamil Nadu. The Popular Front of India, Campus Front of India and seven other associated outfits were banned by the Government of India for unlawful activities in September, 2022.
Mass sexual assault is the collective sexual assault of women, men and sometimes children, in public by groups. Typically acting under the protective cover of large gatherings, victims have reported being groped, stripped, beaten, bitten, penetrated and raped.
Pinjra Tod is a collective of women students and alumni of colleges from across Delhi, India, that seeks to make regulations for hostel and paying guest (PG) accommodation less restrictive for women students. They aim to counter a perceived official narrative that women need to be protected. Challenging what they consider to be the CCTV-driven police-security complex, Pinjra Tod demands that concepts of safety and security not be used to silence women's right to mobility and liberation.
The Banaras Hindu University women's rights protest is a series of events beginning with a Banaras Hindu University student's September 2017 complaint that the university administration treated women unfairly.
Student violence has become a serious issue for universities and colleges of India. The type of student violence can vary from political rivalries to shootings to sexual harassment.
The Citizenship Amendment Act (Bill) protests, also known as the CAA Protest, CAB Protest or CAA and NRC protests, occurred after the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) was enacted by the Government of India on 12 December 2019. The move sparked a widespread national and overseas ongoing protests against the act and its associated proposals of the National Register of Citizens (NRC). The protests first began in Assam and spread swiftly in other states such as Delhi, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, and Tripura on 4 December 2019. Protests broke out rapidly across the country, although the concerns of the protesters vary.
On 5 January 2020, more than 50 masked people armed with rods, sticks and acid attacked the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, and injured more than 39 students and teachers. Many students received serious injuries. Professors who tried to intervene and protect the students, as well as ambulances carrying injured individuals, were attacked. Eyewitnesses stated that police within the campus did not intervene to stop the mob. After attacking residents of the university campus for three hours, the mob escaped; none of its members was arrested or detained. All 36 students who were injured and admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi (AIIMS) were discharged within 24 hours.
The Jamia Millia Islamia attack refers to the forceful entry by Delhi police into the Jamia Millia Islamia university during a confrontation with student protesters that started outside the campus on 15 December 2019. Hundreds of police officers forcefully entered the campus and detained more than a hundred students during the confrontation with the protesters. The police used batons and tear gas to disperse protesters. The police also entered the university library and washrooms and in the process of the violence ransacked parts of it. The visuals of students being dragged and assaulted by the police were telecast by news channels. About two hundred people were injured and were admitted to AIIMS and the Holy Family Hospital.
The Jasleen Kaur harassment controversy stemmed from the allegation of sexual harassment made by Jasleen Kaur against Sarvjeet Singh in 2015 and the events that followed. In August 2015, Jasleen Kaur, a woman from Delhi posted a photo of Sarvjeet Singh on Facebook, alleging that Singh had sexually harassed her. The post went viral on social media in India, garnering widespread attention. National celebrities and politicians provided Kaur with widespread support for raising her voice against eve-teasing and sexual harassment on social media.
The Pollachi sexual assault case refers to a case of rape and extortion of numerous women by a gang in Pollachi, Coimbatore in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The gang would entice women into isolated places after befriending them on social media and sexually assault them and filmed the act. The videos were later used to blackmail the women for sexual favors or money. The gang came into spotlight after the family of a 19-year-old college student who claimed to had been sexually assaulted and blackmailed complained to the police. According to media accounts, at least 200 women are sexually assaulted in the very same manner and the victims were college and school teachers, doctors, higher secondary school students from all over the state. On the mobiles of the accused, police said they discovered dozens of video recordings of women being abused at a farmhouse belonging to one of the accused and some were leaked.
