Last Sunday, at 9.30pm, around 200 people, mostly women, gathered in Koramangala to walk five kilometres to Indiranagar along the Intermediate Ring Road, demanding greater safety for women in public spaces after dark. The route, which included poorly lit stretches and isolated patches, was chosen deliberately to draw attention to the spaces many women hesitate to navigate at night.
The Bengaluru march was part of a nationwide mobilisation in solidarity with student protests in Delhi after a 17-year-old reported being gang-raped by three men allegedly posing as police officers. Another incident that shook the country took place in Bihar’s Jamui the previous week, where a Class 10 student and her male friend were assaulted by a group of men.
So many people came forward with their experiences of harassment and assault, and some even spoke about how it had happened within their own families,” she says. The conversations reinforced the reason behind the march, she says: women continue to feel unsafe not only at night or in public spaces, but also during the day and even within their own homes. Outrage also grew online and offline after colleges in Delhi asked women students to stay home citing safety concerns. For Sneha*, a fitness coach who participated in the march, one of its most striking aspects was hearing people share their own experiences. “We had a few pit stops where we stood and shared our stories.