Unsafe Classrooms, Unsafe Streets: Who Will Protect Bengal’s Daughters?
by Dr. Nitya Prakash
The brutal gang-rape of a young medical student in Durgapur is not just another crime report—it is a chilling reminder of how unsafe our campuses and cities have become for women.
She had stepped out with a friend for a simple evening snack. What followed was a nightmare: a group of men stalked them, chased away her companion, and dragged her into the darkness of a wooded patch near her college. She was found later, injured and shaken, a phone snatched, her dignity torn apart.
Her father’s anguished words—“My daughter is unsafe here. Once she recovers, we will take her home”—echo the despair of countless parents who send their children to study with hope, only to see them betrayed by the very environment meant to nurture their future.
But this is not an isolated tragedy. Bengal has been scarred by repeated assaults: the horrific rape and murder at RG Kar Medical College, the rape of a law student in south Kolkata, and the shocking assault at IIM Joka. Each case generates outrage, candle marches, and promises of swift justice. Yet little changes.
Why? Because our systems move slowly. Investigations drag, trials stall, and perpetrators calculate that delay is their best ally. As Archana Majumdar of the National Commission for Women bluntly put it: “Delay in investigation and judgments has emboldened the criminals.”
The message this sends is catastrophic: that young women, even in centres of learning, are fair game. That predators can strike without fear of consequence. That our slogans of “Beti Bachao” ring hollow when daughters cannot step out for a plate of phuchka without risking their lives.
This is not only about policing. It is about political will, judicial urgency, and a society that refuses to normalize the violence it claims to condemn. Each assault chips away at public trust, each delay reinforces impunity, and each silence deepens the wound.
The Durgapur survivor deserves justice—not in years, but now. More than that, Bengal’s daughters deserve to live, study, and walk their streets without fear. Anything less is complicity.
