By Ishita Thakur
When one of India’s most reputed women’s colleges, Lady Shri Ram College (LSR) in New Delhi, shifted its classes online late last month, it wasn’t due to a storm or flooding or a pandemic. It was because some men posing as police officers manipulated and gained the trust of a 17-year-old girl and then gang-raped her in Astha Kunj park just a few meters away from the LSR campus.
This is, unfortunately, not an uncommon occurrence. According to the official National Crime Records Bureau data, India recorded 29,536 rape cases in 2024, which is about 81 reported cases each day, not to mention the cases that go unreported due to social stigma and fear.
In around 96.8 percent of cases that are registered, the accused was a relative, partner or acquaintance of the victim, which means the “stranger danger” framework driving curfews and chaperones is solving for the wrong threat entirely.
As a first-year college student in the city, I share my live location with my parents every single time I walk to the metro station or go out with my friends. I’m so used to practicing this in my daily routine that I barely notice that I’m doing it anymore.
One afternoon, before 5 pm on a busy road, I was walking to a café with a friend who was a few steps ahead of me and couldn’t see what was happening behind her. An old man in his 60s or 70s, visibly drunk, began walking beside me and asking where I was from. I refused to share that, but he kept following me.
When we reached the café, he stood right next to me, so close that there was barely any space between us, and kept talking even after I repeatedly told him to stop. The café was full, so my friend and I turned back. Due to strong wind that day, my allergies flared up and I had to stop in the middle of the road just to catch my breath.
The man stopped beside me again, asked if we could be friends, and tried to hand me a slip of paper with his number on it. I told him firmly that I did not want to talk to him, yet he followed me all the way home.
What stays with me most is not only how scared I was, but what I did afterwards: I blamed myself. I wondered if I should have walked differently, spoken differently, or not been there at all. That is the mindset society drills into women, and it is exactly how the burden of fear moves from the man who caused it to the girl who survived it.
The real issue isn’t that the streets of India are unsafe; it’s that the majority of Indian institutions respond to crimes by shrinking women’s rights instead of holding men who make it dangerous for women accountable.
When LSR moved its classes online, it followed a decades-old script, lied about the reality, and constructed another misleading narrative to divert public attention. This isn’t the first time an incident was covered up like this.
After Nirbhaya in 2012, campuses tightened the rules and curfews for women instead of men. Six years ago, a 19-year-old girl was sexually assaulted in Hathras, causing fatal injuries, which later led to her death. Hostels added more locks, while more accountability should have been enforced.
Each time a crime against women happens, the burden of prevention shifts onto the victims. They are expected to carry items like pepper sprays and knives for their safety and blamed if they aren’t able to protect themselves. While women live with this constant sense of fear, the conditions that produce the violence go untouched.
Even if a woman does everything “by the book” after being sexually assaulted, gathering up the courage, going to the police, and then filling a report, what happens then? A Bengaluru newspaper report from 2024 answers this question. In Bengaluru, out of 1,322 rape cases filed over a span of 11 years, only 10 ended in conviction. That is a conviction rate of less than 1 percent.
This isn’t a one-time thing; even POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act) cases now take nearly five years on average to conclude. Think of this as five whole years for a victim and her family to survive without justice while her assailant roams freely on the streets, often in her own vicinity.
The most logical conclusion is unavoidable. When the system that’s trusted by the entire public, which is supposed to deliver justice, takes up to half a decade and fails nine times out of 10, institutions resort to the only lever they can pull quickly: restricting women’s movement.
This is nothing but a silent admission of failure dressed up as caution. Real safety would be funding forensic labs, staffing the courts that already exist, and holding men accountable.
Seen from another perspective, some would argue that requirements of curfews and chaperones are simply practical; that is only true until the justice system improves and institutions take on the duty to minimize immediate risk, however they can, even imperfectly. There is a sliver of truth in this; no one should discourage a woman from taking precautions that can genuinely help her be safer.
But pragmatism slowly changes into complicity when it substitutes for reform rather than accompanying it. As the Justice Verma Committee stated, India’s core problem isn’t the shortage of laws but a failure to properly execute these laws. This is an issue that no curfew for women can ever fix.
What would have actually protected the girl assaulted near LSR is definitely a question worth asking. It isn’t confinement for sure, but it is a better-funded and employed forensic and legal system, better lighting and patrols around the entire campus, and not just a shift to Zoom.
Safetipin’s Delhi audits have repeatedly flagged poor lighting near campuses like LSR. This is more of a fixable gap rather than an inevitability. Educational institutions should look further into the University Grants Commission’s SAKSHAM guidelines, which prioritize sensitization and functional grievance cells over curfews, while organizations should mandate bystander training.
Every curfew, every “be careful out there”, every locked hostel gate sends the same subliminal message: the danger is yours to manage, not ours to solve. This message is a lie presented as a concern.
A country advanced enough that it can send rockets to the moon can definitely staff its fast-track courts and fix this long-awaited issue of women’s safety, and until it does, we should call it what it is: a society still deciding whether a woman’s freedom is negotiable.
It shouldn’t be.
Ishita Thakur is a BSc psychology student at Christ University, Delhi NCR, whose writing explores gender, social realities, mental health, and the voices and experiences often overlooked.
Lead image: Dean Drobot / AI-edited
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