No safe spaces for women: Delhi girl's tweets show how unsafe cities are

This Delhi student had a scary experience at a metro station

The December, 2012 rape case in Delhi shook the nation and demonstrated how unsafe our cities are for women. People came out on the streets to protest and ask for security. Even though this incident brought to fore this important issue, it hasn't made our cities any safer for the female population.

Women in any city struggle to identify spaces where they can be safe. In Delhi-NCR, the Delhi Metro is considered a safe space with reserved coaches for women, cctv coverage and a sense of security thanks to the large number of security personnel that man the stations. But is this true? This belief was shattered when a student Megha Dixit started sharing her experience at the Golf Course metro station in Noida.

Megha is doing her Master's in Electronics and took to Twitter to describe a scary experience that she had at the station. She was waiting outside the station waiting for her parents. She felt that a man had been stalking her. What's shocking is that nobody came to her help and even the security guard was unresponsive.

Later, Megha spoke to The Quint and said, “I realised that what happened today could have happened to anybody and could have been worse. I was angry at how inefficient the security arrangements are.

How weak a woman can get in such situations and how easy it is for these creeps to take an upper hand. People who refused to nab the guy came to me and said ‘Madame aap report kardo, Madam aap pakdo isse’. All this while my father was still trying to chase him! The helplessness that my family and I have gone through while being surrounded by a crowd is what prompted me to put up this Twitter post.”

Her tweet series just goes to show how unsafe our urban spaces are for half of our population and we are unable to find a solution to this widespread problem.