“Bura na mano, Holi hai!”
Every year, this one sentence allows people to harass, stalk, and abuse. And this year, sadly, it is no different.
In a disturbing incident, a first year graduate student of Lady Sri Ram College, New Delhi, was attacked with a water balloon.
The liquid? Semen.
“It dried white on my black leggings, and the foreign smell clearly indicated that it wasn’t water. Of course, at that point in time, I didn’t guess what it really was. Not even close to what it really was. You see, nobody had thrown semen at me before yesterday...” wrote the student on her Instagram post.
In a second Instagram post, the student narrated how she was the target of racial abuses in the past because she comes from the northeast.
“Go ahead. Scream ‘Chinese’ at me from across the street and run off. I won’t even get more than mildly annoyed. I’m so used to it now. ‘Chinky girls are easy’.I wonder where my ‘FAULT’ lies really. In being born a girl, or in being from the North-East,” she wrote.
#MyWhiteKurta
The Instagram post has opened a can of worms, with other students coming forward and narrating similar instances using the hashtag #MyWhiteKurta.
“My white kurta doesn’t invite you to throw balloons on me. A girl walking alone on road doesn’t invite you to wish her happy Holi by touching her body,” she said on Instagram.
Students of LSR Protest
Students of Lady Sri Ram College held a protest against violence under the garb of Holi on Thursday, 1 March. This is what they had to say.
Sub Inspector Manoj Solanki said that Section 144 would be imposed in Delhi’s South East District and warned of strict action against harassment of women under the pretext of Holi.
A person can be booked under section 188 if he/she is accused of throwing water balloons at people without their consent, according to the police.
LSR Acts, Increases Security
The Women’s Development Cell of Lady Sri Ram College organised an emergency meeting in light of the incident. The LSR Students’ Union issued the following statement on Facebook enumerating the security arrangements that have been made by the college.
Women are Stalked and Hit With Water Balloons
This isn’t a stand alone instance.
Such incidents have been reported around Lady Shri Ram College for many years now. People usually lurk around the college armed with water balloons, waiting for a woman to come out. It is done under the garb of Holi and women are expected to be okay with it.
Stalking is not ok, hitting women out of the blue is not ok.
Unfettered stalking leads to such crimes, and that is why The Quint is running a campaign to make stalking a non-bailable offence.
Make Stalking a Non-Bailable Offence
Do you know that stalking is a bailable offence under the Indian criminal law? This allows stalkers to get bail without serious scrutiny, often putting victims at risk of facing acid attacks, rapes, and sometimes even murder.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB):
- There has been a 33 percent rise in stalking cases. As many as 4,699 cases were reported in 2014 and 6,266 cases were reported in 2015
- Around 26 percent of the cases ended in conviction in 2015
- Around 35 percent of the cases ended in conviction in 2014
- In 2015, 83 percent of the accused were given bail before the investigation ended
- In 2014, 85 percent of the accused were given bail before the investigation ended
- Around 60 percent of all accused were men aged between 18 and 30. Around 2 percent were juveniles between the ages of 16 and 18.
This is why The Quint has launched a petition along with Varnika Kundu and MP Shashi Tharoor to appeal that Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh make stalking a non-bailable offence. Sign our petition here.
(This is a developing story and will be updated)
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