NE Girls and Delhi

They are a community most vulnerable to the ‘mainland’ libido in the country’s capital. Just because their features are ‘un-Indian’ and they dress up very casually, girls from the Northeast in Delhi turn out to be a very different species for the city’s perverts. The gruesome murder of Ramchanphy Hongray, 19-year-old Naga girl from Manipur, by IIT-Delhi PhD scholar Puspam Kumar Sinha following her resistance to his sexual advances at the kitchen of her rented house in Delhi’s Munirka Village — home to most from the Northeast in the national capital — must now be a wake-up call to her likes who opt for Delhi for greener pastures. An Arunachali girl too was molested by school boys in Delhi last week. These are not isolated incidents, but a trend that has become only too monstrous by the day. For one, a typical attitude is at work: those from the country’s hinterland that looks so different from the rest of the country in terms of features of people and their culture, tradition and lifestyle, should be treated differently. For another, and to put it bluntly, given the kind of Western attire worn freely and jelling so very well with their features, girls from the Northeast in Delhi are a very attractive community, who the Delhite obsessed with them would think they must be winnable too! The man also knows they are a minority, hence powerless. Should, therefore, our girls in the national capital change their attire and lifestyle? Why should they? It is a free world. They should rather ensure that their houses are locked properly, that they live as a group, that they avoid secluded places and night to venture out alone, and, most importantly, that they are backed by an assertive and effective helpline. And yes, Delhi is as much their city as anyone’s. They should now prove that they are capable of defeating an exclusive sexual terror there. THE SENTINEL