(This story originally appeared in on Jan 6, 2017)

Ranadeep Chakraborty

BySristi, 20, and her female friend, also a student, decided to celebrate the new year’s arrival watching the movie Dangal. The new year arrived while they were watching Fatima Sana Shaikh triumphing against all odds and making India proud to have a daughter.Sristi, who is new in Bengaluru, has been to Church Street around three to four times in her six-month stay in Bengaluru.“A friend and I went for a 10 pm movie on the eve of new year at Rex Theatre on Brigade Road. After the movie ended at around 12.45 am, we were hungry and wanted to go to a nearby eatery on Church Street,” said Sristi “As soon as we entered Church Street, we saw men behaving very objectionably. Drunk men were trying to touch women inappropriately and breaking alcohol bottles on the streets. A drunk man randomly came and hugged me. By the time it could register in my mind, I was groped again by another man. I wanted to rush out of the location as soon as possible as I was very scared,” she said.Sristi and her friend tried every possible method to avoid making any physical contact with any person in the lane. “We went straightaway to a policeman whom we spotted nearby and told him whatever had happened. He was busy trying to control the crowd, and advised us to leave the spot and walk towards MG Road. I told him that I wanted to hire a cab from the spot, but he insisted on us leaving the spot and hiring a cab from MG Road.”She says the spot was somewhere between the Church Street and Brigade Road junction.“We started walking towards MG Road to hire a cab back home, but the nightmare didn’t seem to stop. It took us almost 45 minutes to reach MG Road. As people kept on nudging us in some form or the other, there were certain people who even groped my backside,” Sristi said. “At this point, I couldn’t take it anymore and approached another policeman standing at the other end of Church Street. As I narrated the incident, he asked me to leave the spot as soon as possible.”“On our way to MG Road, I realised that these people randomly touched women inappropriately and there were almost 10 men who tried to grope me from everywhere, apart from the number of nudges that I received,” Sristi said.