She Must Have Been Afraid

The 2012 Delhi gang rape is reflective of a systematic failure to cleanse the societal malaise

- Sharmita Kar

IT was a chilly winter evening in Delhi. A physiotherapy intern had gone to watch the movie ‘Life of Pi’ with her friend at PVR Select City Walk in Saket on December 16, 2012. By the time they left the theatre, it was past 9 pm.

They were waiting at the Munirka bus stand to take the next bus home to Dwarka. When an off-duty chartered bus stopped there and offered them a ride, they did not realise it was a private bus. What happened next left the country in shock.

There were six male occupants on the bus, drunk. After covering some distance, the bus took a different route, making the woman and her friend suspicious. The friend tried to inquire and got into a scuffle with the group. They knocked him down using an iron rod, then dragged her to the back of the bus and gang-raped her while the bus travelled all over Delhi. When she protested, they beat her and shoved an iron rod into her private parts. After a while, the couple were thrown out of the moving bus, naked and bleeding. After her death, she was named Nirbhaya—the one without fear.

When the incident happened, Seema Samridhi Kushwaha was a law trainee preparing for the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) exam. She used to stay as a paying guest in Delhi. After the news broke, she saw several bags packed, as her flatmates were called and persuaded by their families to move back home because it was no longer “safe” for women to live in Delhi. But she continued to stay in the city.

“It unnerved me. It reminded me of my childhood when a panchayat was held in my village to decide whether I should be allowed to go to another district to study beyond class 8. That day, I made a promise to myself to fight for Nirbhaya and for all women of this country,” she says.