The back gate area of Lady Shri Ram College For Women, DU, bustled with slogans of “Azaadi” on the evening of 23rd September, with hundreds of women joining the solidarity march that was organised to raise concerns about women’s safety following the alleged gang rape of a 17-year-old minor near Aastha Kunj earlier this week.
Around 4PM, on the evening of 23rd September, hundreds of women students from various DU colleges like LSR and Gargi gathered at National Park, near the back gate of Lady Shri Ram College For Women, DU, to lead a solidarity march, raising their voices about concerns of women’s safety in the national capital of the country, especially in and around Delhi University colleges.
Despite several media channels portraying this as a solidarity march organised and participated in only by LSR students, several students present at the march have denied such claims.
“To clarify, this is not an LSR issue; this is an all-women, all-DU issue,” says a student present at the march. “When a curfew is established, it only stops women from going out; it doesn’t hinder the men from committing heinous crimes, like rape,” she further states.
The march was joined in by hundreds of women from multiple DU colleges, making it successful in raising collective concerns about inadequate CCTV surveillance and patrolling in the area, as students state that security concerns had persisted long before the recent incident. Demanding the same, chants of “Azaadi” and “Inquilab Zindabaad” filled the premises of National Park and Moolchand.
Police cars, along with abundant police forces, covered the entire area, ensuring the march remained peaceful and didn’t turn into a public disruption. However, these same police forces were also seen to stop for deliberations and negotiations with the student body regarding which path the march should take or till where they should be allowed to move forward. Despite this, the march did not come to a halt for once.
This all-women’s march saw students raising slogans and carrying posters highlighting the need for better security infrastructure around the college and its adjoining areas, as yet another rape incident brought the longstanding demand for women’s safety into focus. The posters that were carried by the students highlighted slogans like, “Moral policing women will not stop rape” and “A woman’s body isn’t a battleground for your power.”
This march is an attempt to reclaim the spaces that are overpowered by men and patriarchal people who have normalised violence against women,”
says a faculty member from LSR who also actively took part in the march.
The march, upon reaching the Pink Booth, which was inaugurated earlier this year in hopes of securing safety for women travelling by the roads nearby leading to Moolchand Metro Station, was met with a long-lasting discussion going back and forth between a few people from the march and the police forces. The spirit of the march was intact, however, as most of the students were seen to sit down, continuing with their loud, energetic chants.
The Pink Booth, though established to make women feel safer, has received heavy scrutiny from students of nearby colleges, especially LSR, ever since its establishment. The concern of the booth being mostly empty has remained a recurring complaint.
The solidarity march however, wasn’t limited just to the students of the nearby colleges. Student organisations like SFI and AISA also joined the march, while parties like ABVP were spotted at the Amar Colony Police Station spreading pamphlets to the police in an attempt to spread awareness.
This inciting incident comes within days of sexual violence in Bihar’s Jamui district, where two juveniles were hounded by a group of masked men who tried to abduct and molest the girl on camera. NCRB data shows increasing incidents of violence against women, with a crime reported every 71 seconds.
Less than a third of cases reported result in convictions. Despite claims of “Encounter Justice” by many Chief Ministers from the BJP, including Adityanath (UP), Hemanta (Assam), Samrat Chaudhary (Bihar) and Suvendhu Adhikari (WB)—the police being ordered to shoot perpetrators before proving their guilt in courts—the rising numbers show that this has not stopped crimes against women. In fact, the majority of reported crimes are by people known to the survivor. The current regime has also famously celebrated powerful men involved in sexual violence, from Brijbhushan Singh to rapists at Kathua – Unnao – Hathras and IIT BHU, even garlanding Bilkis Bano’s rapists.
The institutional shortcomings are starkly evident in the recurring campus violence and administrative failures in DU. The reinstatement of a professor found guilty of sexual harassment at Ramjas College in 2025, the routine normalization of sexual harassment during college fests at women’s colleges, systemic harassment allegations at Bharati College in 2018, and the aggressive hooliganism and harassment targeting women during DUSU elections reiterate how unsafe university spaces remain for women and gender minorities.
As one of the posters said, “It’s not my fault I crave the night air; it’s your fault you crave taking it away from me.”
This march is not new, nor are the crimes against women. Today, the students of a central university do not feel safe around their own campus; tomorrow, we will hear headlines talking about another case where women do not feel safe inside the four walls of their own house. The perpetual oppression and violence against women have been continuing for centuries, yet the system fails them time and again, compelling them to take to the streets and reclaim spaces that were never supposed to be bound by any ownership.
Chandrani
Image Credits: Nibedita & Sheetal for DU Beat
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