MUDITA Girotra By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Earlier this month, a student of Delhi University’s Lady Sri Ram College was allegedly harassed by two men, one of whom grabbed her by her throat, in a lane adjacent to the hostel, prompting her to send an anonymous message on several WhatsApp groups to alert others to “be cautious”.

The members of the institution’s Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) approached the police, which promised regular patrolling, “but the paths (leading to the campus, as well as hostel and nearby paying guest accommodations) remain as scary as before”. More than 1,000 girls stay on the college campus and other hostels and PGs in the area.

Most girls living in the hostel and PGs nearby said they had been victims of sexual assault on these lanes, “even after the MCD installed street lights”. “The lights don’t function most of the time. That is the issue the authorities need to address,” one of them said. A hostel boarder said that men “on a regular basis” park their cars nearby to consume liquor and target girls in the area.“They masturbate looking at us. It is scary to even think of taking these lanes at night,” one of them said.

“Last year, we heard that a girl went missing from the area. She was apparently picked by a few men, who later let her go.”A third-year student who lives in a PG in the area told this newspaper that incidents of catcalling, eve-teasing and masturbation in public “are common”, but this recent incident “shook us all”.

While there was no response from the police, college and hostel authorities, a student representative in the college’s Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) said, “We have been receiving a number of verbal complaints of harassment but written complaints have been few.”