Video Editor: Abhishek Sharma
Producer: Stuti Shukla
On the night of 9 July, I travelled from Allahabad to Delhi in an overnight train, the Shiv Ganga Express. I had gone to visit my father, who lives in Allahabad, for two days and I was on my way back to Delhi. The train had left at around 10:30 pm.
When I entered the compartment and reached my berth, I realised that all the berths around me were filled with male passengers. This made me a little uncomfortable, as it always does, but I told myself that I shouldn't let paranoia get the better of me. I soon fell asleep.
I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night. The passenger on the berth right above mine was sitting on my seat right next to my legs, and I could feel his hand right above my right knee. Though I was aware this was strange, my first instinct was still to try and justify this in favour of the man.
Just as I began to convince myself that it must have been a careless mistake, his hand began to slide up my thigh. There was no room for doubt. I immediately said “Aap kya kar rahe hain?” (“what are you doing?”)
He said "sorry sorry" and left. I pondered over my next course of action for the next two hours.
I set out to look for the train’s TTE He listened to me patiently and asked me "Aapne tab hi kyu nahi bola? Aapne thappad kyun nahi mara? Ab kya ho sakta hai?" ("Why didnt you say anything earlier? Why didn't you slap the man? What can we do now?").
A passenger sitting right there, who had overheard the entire conversation, said “Aap akeli travel kar rahi hain? Isliye”.
The police arrived soon and woke up this man. I told him to sit in front of me and tell me how his hand managed to reach my thigh in the middle of the night. His excuse was that he had fallen asleep while sitting on my seat and must have put it there by mistake.
When we arrived at the New Delhi station, the police on the train escorted this man to the police station, and asked me to come along to register the FIR.
In the afternoon, I waited for an hour for the police to arrive with the FIR at Tis Hazari and then we shuffled from courtroom to courtroom to record my Section 164 statement, which also took about two hours.
This is for every single time that I, and so many of my friends, held our silence due to fear, lack of confidence or even pity. This is the one time I didn’t freeze and I’m glad. #IWillNotLetItGo
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