00:00But let me come across to my colleague Shreya Kundu joining us live from outside the LSR college
00:04where students are saying they've had enough.
00:07Shreya, I was looking at the visuals and the protest, you know, site earlier.
00:11I see a lot of young girls with masks on their face, perhaps don't want to reveal their identity,
00:16but their voices are not, you know, mellowed by that mask at all.
00:19I can hear, you know, drums behind you as well.
00:22Take me through what really are the demands of these young girls.
00:30You know, firstly, Sonal, very good evening to our viewers.
00:33One thing is very clear and they have mentioned this clearly.
00:36This is not a protest march. It's a march in solidarity.
00:40Now, as I speak, as you've mentioned as well, you can hear the drum rolls behind me.
00:44This is a signature style for LSRs to protest or to even show solidarity towards any movement or amplify their
00:52voices.
00:53Some of the posters, if you can see right behind me, they read out,
00:58I have a hundred problems, but 99 of them are patriarchy.
01:03These are the kind of posters we have.
01:05I remember back in my college days, there was a very popular line that had come up,
01:10which was how my favorite season is the fall of patriarchy.
01:15Simple slogans, but it shows the message of how women,
01:19how these students, female students, still have to fight to reclaim their spaces on the streets of Delhi.
01:28Earlier, I was talking to a student and she had a very simple thing to say that, you know,
01:33we come here to study.
01:34We are not here to protest or raise our voices or, for that matter, flag issues,
01:39which should have been taken care of by the authorities in the first place.
01:43It's not our duty to be giving consistent wake-up calls to the authorities that,
01:48yes, our safety, our security is in your hands and it should be taken care of by you.
01:54That's the sad reality even in 2026.
01:57You know, 2012 is when Nirbhaya happened.
02:00It's the same city.
02:02Perhaps, yes, a different government.
02:03But very little has changed when it comes to the security of females and women out on the streets of
02:11Delhi.
02:11The ELSAs have to say this, that there are basic issues that they've been raising for years now.
02:18Simple stuff like CCTV cameras malfunctioning, police patrolling,
02:23the number of police personnel we see here today,
02:26this is a normal patrol,
02:29this is what a normal patrol session is supposed to look like outside the college.
02:32But unfortunately, that's not the case.
02:34This is not what you see on a daily basis,
02:37even though that's the mandate that has been, in fact, given out as an order.
02:41So this is the basic problem that the students have to come out
02:45and, you know, constantly amplify their voices with regards to.
02:50Yes, some of the students have come out to say that they are concerned about their identities being revealed.
02:55But at the same time, none of them have backed out,
02:58even wearing masks, dupattas, whatever possible.
03:01They have not backed out from amplifying their voices,
03:04because they have to say that even if we have failed time and again by the authorities,
03:09we will not back away from our duty, which is to continue demanding our safety and security.
03:15It's a basic human right.
03:17But despite that, it's not out there, it's not provided to them,
03:21which is why they continue to raise their voice and they'll continue to do so.
03:25Slogans of Azadi echoing right behind me.
03:29As you can see, the crowd that has gathered, the number of students that have gathered,
03:34there were issues with regards to permissions about this very much.
03:38But despite that, fearless women out here from the Lady Sriram College today
03:43to take their cause forward and their cause simply being their own safety be taken care of.
03:52Sriya, give me an understanding here.
03:54Is this an isolated LSR protest?
03:57Or are you sensing that there will be more colleges, women colleges,
04:02others in South Campus, Gargi and the rest of them be joining in as well?
04:06At the end of the day, we keep saying this is no country for women,
04:09perhaps no country for the young either.
04:10But I'm just trying to understand, is this an isolated LSR incident
04:14or like an isolated LSR solidarity march?
04:17Or do you see more come in?
04:23So, Sonal, on that part, let me just bring about the location of this college here into perspective.
04:30This is, LSR is a part of the South Campus.
04:33And when I say South Campus, this is one of those institutes
04:36which is a little distant and secluded from the rest of the colleges
04:40which are perhaps towards Green Park or Kamala Nagar,
04:44those college premises that we see.
04:47There are clusters of colleges there.
04:49So, LSR time and again has continued to face this issue.
04:53Every time we see this issue of eve-teasing, of sexual harassment,
04:58over the years they've come up from LSR
05:01which is why LSR's students have been more vocal about this issue than other colleges.
05:08But having said that, let me point this out,
05:10that these cases keep mounting, be it in the North Campus,
05:14be it in the other colleges of the South Campus.
05:17We were hearing from the students itself,
05:20their colleagues, their batchmates, I beg your pardon,
05:23from different other colleges of the South Campus
05:26without naming them because they don't want them to be named.
05:29But at the same time, they've said that these cases of eve-teasing,
05:33these cases of harassment, they keep taking place.
05:36And yet the authorities do not act.
05:38Somewhere, some of the students were even, you know,
05:42under a lot of despair,
05:45saying that part of it has become a part of our normalized routine.
05:49We've gotten conditioned that this keeps happening to us,
05:51which is a very unfortunate reality for women in 2026.
05:56That is the sad part.
05:57Now, as far as college protests go,
06:00when we speak of the Delhi University,
06:01we've just seen a high-voltage contest for the DUSU,
06:05which is the Delhi University Students' Union.
06:07That just took place this weekend.
06:09Now, whether the North campuses will,
06:11the students will come and join,
06:13whether the DUSU will also take cognizance of this,
06:15even though LSR doesn't take part in the DUSU college elections,
06:20whether they will come in solidarity and also speak up,
06:23that's something I would say is a little improbable,
06:26hasn't happened.
06:26But the cases, however, keep happening across universities,
06:31across campuses in the national capital.
06:33And that is a reality that's been there for years now.
06:36That is the unfortunate part of how normalized and conditioned
06:41these students have gotten to these very circumstances,
06:44which should not be the reality, but unfortunately is.
