Anger snowballs on Wednesday in the South Asian University in Delhi’s Maidan Garhi area after a first-year engineering student was allegedly gang-raped on Sunday, reportedly inside the campus. The victim’s clothes were stripped, and a pill was allegedly inserted into her mouth, and subsequently she was gang raped, a crime that student, told FoEJ Media the administration tried to brush off and that the caretaker of the victim’s hostel, Anupama Arora, labeled it a “panic attack.”
Apnupama Arora, in an audio message accessed by FoEJ Media, said. “Nothing like that has happened to her (the victim). You’re all misunderstanding the situation. She’s going through mental stress and experiences anxiety attacks,” she said. FoEJ Media also made a call to Anupuma Arora, but the call was not answered.
In response to the crime, the students of the South Asian University conducted a “peaceful gathering and protest rally” to stand in solidarity with the victim. The protesting students demand “identification of the culprits, suspension of the caretaker and hostel warden, and transparency in the legal proceedings of the case conducted by the university,” a protesting student told FoEJ Media.
The protest was carried out by the university students from different courses, with banners and slogans like “Stop covering assault,” “Justice delayed is equal to justice denied,” “College walls cannot hide criminals,” and “No safety, no duty.”
“The administration dismissed several of the students’ demands, brushed off a few of them, and gave unsatisfactory justifications for others,” students told FoEJ Media.
“During this entire time the number of security guards on campus had increased significantly, and there were visible signs of police deployment, including two buses, several jeeps, and many policemen around the campus. It is clear that these forces are not present to investigate the case, and students are demanding to know why such a large police presence has been called to campus,” they added.
“The physical and emotional safety of the survivor is our priority. This is not an isolated incident but a part of the larger systemic failure, it is not a bug but a feature of this administration and its insular and opaque policies.” protestors told FoEJ Media.
