PGs are known for their discriminatory rules, shaming of women, and sometimes, even a few creepy instances at the hands of the ‘overfriendly’ nearby uncle, or the PG aunty’s son. But a home invasion?
This new low, and absolute infringement of privacy and decency, took place in a South Delhi PG for a student of Lady Shri Ram College.
According to a recent post on the Facebook page Pinjra Tod: Break the Hostel Locks, a collective against discriminatory practices and shabby conditions in women’s hostels and PGs, a man forced his way into the PG, and allegedly masturbated in one of the girl’s rooms, and when the girls took their complaint to the owners of the place, they laughed it off, shrugged the matter aside and said it didn’t even deserve a police complaint. Read on:
I turned back and saw a drunk man standing behind me. Just behind me. His pants were unbuttoned and his penis was in his hand. I managed to pull a chair from the kitchen and pushed the man away and locked myself in my room which is adjacent to the kitchen. He kept on knocking at my door for the next few minutes and after that he got inside another room... When the PG owner arrived, he beat the man up and let him go and didn’t let us file a police complaint.A blogpost that alleges sexual assault, produced verbatim from Pinjra Tod’s FB page
The full post is visible here.
Needless to say, the incident has shocked many readers.
Chills down to my bones.Greeshma Gireesh
In a PG? Name the damn PG. With full address. If they won’t let you file a complaint make sure the goddamn PG does not get another girl to live there. Please update the status and put down the whole address.Harshit Gupta
This is horrifying. To have your space invaded in this manner must have been terrifying. Please do file an FIR in the police station nearest to the place of incident. If the police refuse to file it, ask them to give their refusal in writing, stamped and signed by an officer. In most cases, this will make them file the FIR. In case they continue to refuse, you could consider writing to DCW or NCW. I also recommend calling them in addition to writing an email, since they might not be too responsive to emails...Vandana Brahmasa
What appalls some women more is how the PG owner, and even the police, trivialised this incident, and actively discouraged the distressed women from filing a police complaint.
Nonetheless, the community is calling all women to boycott PGs such as these, through its PG Blocklist, and is encouraging the women involved to come forward and share its location.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)