INTERNATIONAL SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2015 India’s women students defy university curfews NEW DELHI: Twenty-year-old zoology stu- A spokesman for Jamia Millia Islamia dent Rani Choudhary left her family home in University in Delhi said a plan to reform the Bihar for the bright lights and freedom of the curfew was “under consideration”. “(Safety) Indian capital. But like most female students measures are the need of the hour. We have in New Delhi she is barred from leaving her to be very mindful, there are global concerns dorm at night except with the express per- over safety of women in India,” Mukesh mission of her father, thanks to a curfew Ranjan said. designed to safeguard her in the city dubbed “India’s rape capital”. ‘Wrong approach’ Wary of the city’s disturbing reputation for Yet students argue that confining them sexual violence, universities force women to inside is not the answer. “If you really want to return to their dorms as early as 7:00 pm- make a city safe for a woman... you have to while their male counterparts can stay out make the city accessible to her, you have to much later. With the Pinjra Tod (“Break the have more women out in the streets,” she Cage”) campaign, launched in August, female said. “So that is the solution, not locking peo- students are fighting back against what they ple inside.” The students are willing to allow say is outright discrimination. “You are sup- their dorms to set a time to return by, as long posed to go and be back at 7:00 pm, at 7:30 as they are not deprived of a social life. pm and 8:00 pm, while your friends studying “One thing we are demanding is... let hos- with you, boys, the men in your class, they tel curfews be at least half an hour after the can (go out at) night and they can enter the library closes or the last metro, so that you’re hostel by 10 or 12,” said Shambhawi Vikkam, NEW DELHI: Indian student activists Shambhawi Vikram (left) and Shriya not locking women out of the public space one of the ringleaders of the movement. Subhashini (center) speak to fellow students as they distribute leaflets outside that they have the right to access,” said Shriya “And even if they have rules and regula- Delhi University’s North Campus in New Delhi. — AFP Subhashini, 25, a law student at the University tions it doesn’t really apply so strictly,” the 23- warnings from parents or the university know that my father will never allow me to go of North Delhi. year-old arts student at the University of Delhi administration about night-time dangers in out at 10:00 pm,” Choudhary said. “There is a A petition by the students addressed to said. At a night-time protest in the capital, the city dubbed “India’s rape capital”. generational gap with my father,” she said, the Delhi Commission for Women-an official about a hundred young female students But for many of India’s female students, adding he has always lived in Bihar, a poor, body responsible for upholding the rights of gathered outside a subway station singing as the desire for independence also conflicts rural state. Concern for the safety of young women in the city-has collected about 1,200 they held up placards proclaiming: “no more with family attitudes in the deeply patriarchal women is the main justification for the cur- signatures. Swati Maliwal, the president of curbing late nights”. country. Choudhary is theoretically allowed fews put forward by the heads of university the commission, promises to help the Other slogans brazenly mocked the rules, out until 11:00 pm four times a month and is residences. The fatal gang rape of a medical women fight discrimination. “I’ve requested declaring “I got a feeling that tonight’s gonna permitted to spend five nights away from her student in Delhi in December 2012 left a pro- the students to list all the discriminations be a good night”. Several of the nocturnal dorm-but says it is impossible in reality. found mark on the capital, and violence they suffer from and I will work with them,” protesters wear dresses or skirts, defying “I need the permission of my parents and I against women has not declined since. Maliwal told AFP. —AFP Nepal facing ‘medical crisis’ Ex-Star India CEO accused in as supplies run short KATHMANDU: Bindu Ghimire’s chemotherapy appointment is murder case gripping India approaching, but supplies of the drugs the 61-year-old desperate- ly needs are in short supply as a political crisis in her native Nepal deepens. Protests at the border with India have already led to Mukerjea remanded in judicial custody crippling fuel shortages in the landlocked Himalayan nation, and now medical supplies are also running short. “So far, the medicine had been available, but the pharmacy is MUMBAI: One of India’s most successful His arrest came as the CBI released a charged were Indrani’s driver Shyam Rai not sure if they can provide it next time,” the 61-year-old’s son media magnates appeared in court yester- statement saying they had filed charges and former husband Sanjeev Khanna. Shashi Shekhar Ghimire said. “I don’t know what I will do if we day to face initial charges he took part in a against Indrani Mukerjea and two others India’s newspapers and TV news chan- don’t get it,” said Ghimire, whose mother has stage two colon criminal conspiracy to murder his step- over the murder three years ago. “The nels have been abuzz with details of the cancer and needs a chemotherapy session every 21 days. daughter. Peter Mukerjea, a former chief Central Bureau of Investigation has today scandal since it first broke, with many car- “It is getting very difficult.” Nepal is heavily dependent on its executive of media behemoth Star India, filed charge sheet in the alleged murder of rying complex family trees illustrating giant neighbor for fuel and other supplies, but little cargo has was remanded in custody after being Ms. Sheena Bora against three private per- who’s who in the case. crossed the border since protests against a new constitution arrested by India’s Central Bureau of sons, including her mother, on charges of Various motives have been put forward, broke out in late September. Demonstrators from the Madhesi Investigation (CBI) in connection with the criminal conspiracy, abduction, murder, including a financial dispute over property ethnic minority have been blockading the main Birgunj crossing murder case gripping the country. destruction of evidence, giving false infor- dealings and a dislike of Bora’s relationship ever since, protesting a new constitution they say leaves them A magistrate granted the CBI three days mation, creation and use of forged docu- with Peter Mukerjea’s son, Rahul. Mumbai politically marginalised. to interrogate Mukerjea, after which the ments etc,” the statement said. The official police initially registered the case before Movement across other border checkpoints has also slowed to agency will decide whether to formally at the CBI confirmed that the others the CBI took it over in September. —AFP a crawl, prompting fuel rationing and forcing the government to charge him with involvement in the death start selling firewood as residents run out of cooking gas. of his wife’s daughter. Who is to blame for all this is a matter of dispute. Nepal’s gov- “The court has given us custody of Peter ernment accuses India, which has criticized the new constitution, Mukerjea until November 23,” a CBI official, of retaliating with an “unofficial blockade”-a charge New Delhi who asked not to be named, told AFP. The denies. “The issues facing Nepal are political in nature. They are CBI, India’s leading investigative agency, internal to Nepal and the Nepalese leadership has to resolve them through dialogue with agitating parties,” said Indian foreign min- arrested Mukerjea late on Thursday after istry spokesman Vikas Swarup at a briefing on Thursday. formally charging his wife Indrani Mukerjea Whatever the explanation, the Nepal Chemists and Druggists with murdering her daughter from a previ- Association says around 350 cargo trucks carrying medicines are ous relationship. stranded at the key crossing point. “We are suffering from a short- Indrani is accused along with her driver age of imported life-saving injections and vaccines,” said and ex-husband of strangling Sheena Bora Mrigendra Shrestha, president of the association. “Medicines are to death before dumping her body in a for- crucial. We are now trying to airlift emergency supplies.” est and setting it alight. Bora, 22, was mur- Meanwhile the head of Bir hospital-Nepal’s oldest-said both fuel dered in April 2012 and her burnt body and vital drugs were running short. “Operations have become dif- was discovered the following month in ficult without fuel. If this blockade continues, we will have a med- woods in India’s western state of ical crisis on our hands,” Swayam Prakash Pandit told AFP. Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capi- Landlocked Nepal imports 60 percent of its medicines, and tal. Indrani was arrested in August on sus- most of them come from India. Even those that are locally pro- picion of murdering the young woman, duced have been affected by the political crisis, which comes just who was having an affair with Peter months after a devastating earthquake that killed nearly 9,000 Mukerjea’s son from a previous marriage. people. Most of the factories are located along the southern bor- Peter Mukerjea was chief executive of der with India, where protests against the new constitution have Fox-owned Star India from 1997 to 2007 been fiercest, and many have been forced to close.