“Auratein utthi nahi toh,
Zulm badhta jayega”
“If women don’t stand up, the crimes against them will only increase,” chanted the ladies helming a late night protest in Chandigarh on Friday. The protest march began a little after 10 pm and lasted till midnight, with a handsome turnout of a few hundred men, women and children.
Days after the stalking of 29-year-old Varnika Kundu by Haryana BJP chief Subhash Barala’s son Vikas catapulted Chandigarh into national headlines, women of all ages came together to demand equal and safe access to public spaces at night.
Chandigarh’s Geri Route, a stretch of road famous for people performing car and bike stunts and flaunting their vehicles (and wealth) in general, has come into the centre of a debate on whether the city’s ‘geri culture’ is partly responsible for normalising stalking. The women’s protest on Friday night traversed the same Geri Route.
Towards the end of the protest, Amy Singh, one of the organisers of the march, boomed into the microphone,
Yeh geri route nahi, yeh meri route hai. (This is not your geri route, this is my route.)
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