When Safe Spaces Turn Unsafe

The recent spate of brutal crimes against women and children across India, with tragic incidents reported from Odisha, Bengal, Delhi, and Sikkim, serves as a damning indictment of our systemic failure to protect the most vulnerable. The death of a 20-year-old student in Balasore, Odisha—who set herself ablaze outside her principal’s office after her sexual harassment complaints were repeatedly ignored—is not just another statistic. It is a searing reminder that institutions meant to safeguard students can become complicit through indifference.

That the young woman’s allegations were brushed aside even after she approached the Chief Minister’s office speaks volumes about the apathy embedded in our governance structures. The subsequent arrest of the accused teacher and the principal is too little, too late. Her death was preventable. Accountability, in this case, must go far beyond arrests—it must force a reckoning with the rot within our institutions.

The rise in crimes in presumed “safe spaces” like schools, colleges, and workplaces is deeply unsettling. From the rape of a minor by her school teacher in Sikkim to gang-rape on a law college campus in Bengal, and sexual assault cases involving faculty in Mangaluru, the trend is clear—formal spaces are no longer safe for women or girls. Worse still is the toothless enforcement of laws meant to protect them.

Ten years after the landmark Nirbhaya case, India may have enacted stringent laws, but their efficacy is undermined by poor implementation and the social stigma attached to reporting. The very existence of Internal Complaint Committees, mandatory under the 2013 Sexual Harassment Act, is being treated as an afterthought—as seen in Odisha, where a rushed directive followed only after tragedy struck.

Sikkim is no exception to this national crisis. Silence in the face of such violence, even within our own institutions, only perpetuates impunity. Until we ensure that complaints are heard and acted upon, until the culture of impunity is dismantled, and until conversations on gender and consent begin early and continue relentlessly, our daughters will remain unsafe—even in places they are supposed to thrive. The protectors have turned predators, and our collective silence is complicity.