Molested thrice in 10 mins by goons: Girls recount horror

New Delhi: Scores of girl students of Gargi College in Delhi, who were attending the annual cultural fest 'Reverie', have allegedly been molested and sexually assaulted by drunk goons who barged into the campus, chanting 'Jai Shree Ram'.

A second year student of political science told IANS over the phone, on condition of anonymity, that "around 6:30 p.m. on February 6, the field was so massively crowded that there was no space to move.

Two of my friends who were accompanying me, they had held my hands so that I don't get lost in the crowd as there is no cell reception on the field. Suddenly immense pressure came from behind and my hand got jerked off so I lost my friends for the next 10-15 minutes, and in those minutes, I was molested thrice."

"Somehow I struggled and moved out and ran towards the empty space behind the stalls. By that time, I had found my friends, they looked at me horrified, but they didn't know what had happened to me as I didn't want to talk about it.

So they went to get water, and would have been gone for just around 5 minutes, but in those five minutes I saw that a 30-35-year-old man began masturbating while looking at me, so I ran from there too," she added, narrating her ordeal.

Another student from the college said: "Around 3-3.30 p.m., large groups of men started pushing the doors and then entered the college. There were no police personnel or bouncers present at the gate from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. when 300-400 people entered the college.

"The college grounds are small, with little place to move around, and that is when some of these men started groping, molesting and harassing us." The student also alleged that when she approached the college principal Promila Kumar, she responded by saying that I should have not come to the fest if I felt so unsafe.

Contacted by IANS, the principal, however, said: "We had a huge security arrangement, including police, bouncers and even commandos along with the teaching and non-teaching staff, on duty.

No one came to us and reported any such incident. We were taking rounds in the crowd. However, there is no doubt that it was very crowded. We were very vigilant but we couldn't see anything of this sort."