A city can build roads, install cameras, and introduce new security measures, yet women may still have to think twice before deciding where to go and when to return home. The question is not simply whether women are safe in public spaces. It is also whether they are allowed to use those spaces freely, without being treated as responsible for the dangers created by others. The alleged gang rape of a 17-year-old girl at Aastha Kunj Park near Kalkaji Mandir in Delhi in September 2026 has brought this question back into public debate. Although the incident is recent, the concerns it raises are not new. They echo a struggle that women students in Delhi have been voicing for years: the right to safety without the loss of freedom.
When a Safety Measure Becomes a Restriction
According to reporting by The Indian Express, the teenager was visiting the Kalkaji area with a friend when three men allegedly approached them at Aastha Kunj Park, claiming to be police officers. The men allegedly separated the girl from her friend and assaulted her. The three accused were subsequently arrested. Investigations and legal proceedings must establish the full facts of the case, but early reporting raised serious questions about the park’s security arrangements.
An India Today report on the incident described gaps in CCTV coverage, poor lighting, and inadequately monitored entrances. These details matter because public safety depends on more than the presence of a security policy on paper. It requires infrastructure that works, staff who are accountable, and timely intervention when someone is in danger.
Following the incident, restrictions on access to parks after sunset became part of the official response, alongside measures such as surveillance and patrols. Such steps may be presented as practical ways to reduce risk. However, they also raise an important question: should the public lose access to public spaces because authorities have failed to make those spaces adequately safe?
Closing a park may reduce the number of people present after dark, but it does not necessarily address the conditions that allowed an alleged crime to occur. Better lighting, functioning cameras, monitored entrances, and reliable emergency responses target security failures more directly. Restrictions can also affect people who depend on public spaces for exercise, social interaction or simply a place to sit after a long day.
The distinction is important. Preventing violence and restricting the movement of potential victims are not the same thing.
Pinjra Tod and the Politics of Permission
This debate has a history within Delhi’s universities. In 2015, women students began organising through Pinjra Tod, a collective whose name means “Break the Cage.” The movement challenged hostel rules that imposed curfews and other restrictions on women students, often more strictly than on men. What might have appeared to be an administrative disagreement over hostel timings developed into a wider discussion about gender, authority and the right to occupy public space.
The movement questioned a familiar argument: that limiting women’s freedom is an acceptable way to protect them. If women must return to their hostels early while men enjoy greater mobility, the burden of preventing harassment falls disproportionately on women. Instead of asking why public places and institutions are unsafe, society begins asking why women were outside in the first place.
A 2020 academic study, “Feminist Politicisation of the Urban: Young Female Students Challenging Spatial Patriarchies”, examines how Pinjra Tod challenged surveillance, moral policing and gender-based control over time and space. Its central relevance to the present debate is that freedom is not only about formal rights. It is also about whether people can actually use streets, parks and institutions without unnecessary restrictions being imposed on them because of their gender.
The connection between a university hostel and a city park may not seem obvious at first. Yet both raise the same issue: who gets to decide where women may go, when they may go there and what they must sacrifice to be considered safe?
The Difference Between Protection and Control
Safety policies are not automatically discriminatory. Curfews may be necessary in particular circumstances, and surveillance can help prevent crime when implemented responsibly. The problem begins when restrictions become a substitute for addressing the causes of danger or when women’s independence is treated as the risk that needs to be managed.
Consider two possible responses to an unsafe park. One is to restrict access after sunset. The other is to improve lighting, repair damaged boundaries, ensure that entrances are monitored, provide emergency contact points and investigate complaints effectively. The second approach requires investment, planning and continued accountability. It also recognises that women and other members of the public have a legitimate claim to use shared spaces.
Neither cameras nor patrols can guarantee that violence will never occur. Their effectiveness depends on placement, maintenance, monitoring and a response system that takes reports seriously.
Safety planning must also consider the experiences of people who may face additional barriers when seeking help, including minors and survivors who fear stigma or disbelief.
Most importantly, responsibility for sexual violence belongs to the perpetrator. A girl’s decision to visit a place, spend time with a friend or travel after sunset does not make her responsible for an assault against her. Advice about personal safety can be useful, but it should never replace institutional responsibility or become a means of blaming survivors.
From Protest to Accountability
Women students in Delhi have continued to raise these concerns through demonstrations and public campaigns. The phrase “Hum Auratein Azaad Hain”—“We women are free”—expresses more than opposition to a particular curfew. It asserts that freedom of movement is an essential part of women’s participation in public life. Reporting on the recent protests has connected demands for justice with wider concerns about women’s safety and autonomy.
Such protests are important because they challenge the idea that women should quietly adapt to unsafe conditions. They also insist that safety policies be judged by their results, rather than by the appearance of action. A new rule may make an administration look responsive, but the real test is whether people become safer without losing rights they already possess.
Authorities should publish clear safety-audit findings, address identified infrastructure problems, and explain how security measures will be monitored. Universities and local administrations should consult students and residents, including women who use public spaces at different times of day. Complaints must be handled seriously, and survivors should be able to seek support without being subjected to unnecessary scrutiny or public humiliation.
These measures will not solve every problem overnight. However, they offer a more meaningful starting point than treating women’s absence from public spaces as proof of safety.
The Fight Is About More Than One Park
Pinjra Tod began by challenging the rules that confined women within university hostels. The Kalkaji case has revived a related question at the level of the city: can women move through public spaces without having their freedom made conditional on the failures of those responsible for protecting them?
The two struggles are not identical, and a university curfew should not be equated with a violent crime. Their connection lies in the broader debate over how society responds to women’s vulnerability. When the response to danger is simply to limit women’s movement, the underlying distribution of responsibility remains unchanged.
A genuinely safe city is not one in which women are visible only during permitted hours. It is one in which public spaces are accessible, institutions are accountable, and violence is investigated without shifting blame onto the person who experienced it.
The demand that emerged from Pinjra Tod remains relevant: safety should expand women’s freedom, not shrink it. The tragedy reported at Aastha Kunj Park makes that demand urgent once again. The challenge now is to ensure that public outrage leads to lasting improvements—not another temporary debate about where women should be allowed to go.
References:
- The Indian Express. “‘Bhai, take out your gun’: How 3 men dragged Delhi teen aside, raped her”. September 25, 2026.
- Zahan, Syeda Jenifa. “Feminist Politicisation of the Urban: Young Female Students Challenging Spatial Patriarchies.” Space and Polity, 2020.
- Kurian, Alka. “Bad Girls of Pinjra Tod.” In Carceral Liberalism: Feminist Voices against State Violence. University of Illinois Press, 2023.
- The Indian Express. “Pinjra Tod: Student campaign exhorts women to oppose ‘sexist’ hostel rules.” September 22, 2015.
- The Tribune. Delhi University students' “Hum Auratein Azaad Hain”. https://www.tribuneindia.com