“Their only objective is to defame the protest and their sympathy with me or protesting women is totally fake,” a survivor of sexual harassment said of the media houses that reported on her ordeal at a farmers’ protest site at Tikri. She spoke to me soon after she had sent legal notices to at least two media houses—OpIndia and CNN News18—for “misreporting” the incidents that occurred in April 2021. “They never consulted me before writing these false stories and sensationalising the whole matter with the usage of words like rape and molestation.” She added, “Words like these insinuate physical assault, which never took place, so they were absolutely out of line to write such stories.”
The 29-year-old, who is a chartered accountant, said that she “never engaged” with these media publications, “yet they went ahead and wrote whatever to set up their agenda-driven narrative.” She told me she believes the government is using the false narrative built around her ordeal as a pretext to defame the protests and derail the movement. “All these so-called news channels and newspapers which published my story without consulting me and sensationalised [it]; they all are state backed media.”
The survivor said that she intends to continue participating in the protests. She supports the cause of the farmers and “wanted to make this protest more women-friendly so that it encourages active participation.” She told me that she went public regarding the incidents because she wanted the leadership of the protests to address women’s issues. “Women have been sitting at the protest shoulder to shoulder with male counterparts for six months now with no certainty of how long it can go, and not even a basic grievance redressal mechanism in place at any protest site.” She added, “The patriarchal mindset and misogynistic attitudes towards women exist everywhere, including a progressive space such as this protest; Hence the dire necessity to have such structures in place where women or any person can reach out to seek redressal of their issues.”
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