Indian schoolgirl’s cycling death lays bare ugly face
Indian schoolgirl’s tragic death has exposed the consequences of “Eve-teasing” – a popular South Asian euphemism which many say trivializes street harassment and assault.
Initially, the CCTV video of two Indian girls riding bikes appears quite innocent.
The teenagers are riding side-by-side on a nearly empty road, dressed in their school uniforms of tunics, salwar bottoms, and scarves.
It doesn’t take long for the calm of the scene to be shattered.
One of the men on a motorbike pulls away the scarf of one of the girls as they overtake them. As soon as she loses her balance, her cycle moves right and collides with a second motorbike coming from behind.
A third motorbike coming from the opposite direction runs over the 17-year-old as she and the riders fall on the road.
The moment I saw my daughter, I knew she was dead,” says her father Sabhajit Varma, who arrived at the scene minutes after receiving a call from his niece.
“Some people had gathered and we loaded her into a tempo [a small vehicle used to transport goods] and rushed her to the hospital,” he told me over the phone.
He said doctors said she had been pronounced dead, that her jaw had been shattered and her head had been severely injured. No last words were spoken, no goodbyes were said.
Mr. Varma lost his wife eight years ago, and he is now living alone with his 17-year-old daughter, the youngest of three daughters. He tells me she had a good academic record and wanted to become a doctor.
She told him two days before she died that some boys were harassing her and other girls outside their school.