Comprehensive safety audit of all city parks: ordered. Increased patrolling: begun. Pink police: planned.

Another gangrape in Delhi, this time of a 17-year-old girl at Aastha Kunj park, near Lady Shriram College (LSR), at around 7.30 pm on September 21. It has been followed by a spate of administrative actions that might have prevented the crime had they already been in place.

That argument is moot. But restricting access to public parks after sundown, and the decision by all-women’s LSR, one of India’s top-ranked institutions, to switch to online classes, even if only for a day, carried an unambiguous message: men commit crimes for which women must be locked up.

The mobility of women has been one of India’s great challenges. Ever since the December 2012 gangrape of a young physiotherapy student in a moving bus, women have been trying to claim their rightful share of space — whether in education or the workplace, on the sports field or in public transport. In many ways, we’ve made progress, but somehow violence against women, including sexual assault, remains a battle we keep circling back to.

In 2012, the crime was gruesome enough for us to march in anger. In response, the government amended the criminal law, expanded the definition of rape, introduced tougher punishments and increased the age of consent from 16 to 18.

Earlier, in 1972, the rape of Mathura, a young tribal girl, inside a police station in Maharashtra and the subsequent acquittal of the accused policemen led to massive protests. The nationwide campaign eventually led in 1983 to a change in the law that recognised custodial rape and modified the idea of consent in certain rape cases, such as those by men in uniform.

And here we are in 2026, back on the street. While the Aastha Kunj park case has received inordinate attention, September’s list of shame includes the rape of a 10-year-old child by a 56-year-old tailor at his shop at Sadar Bazar; the assault of a six-year-old by a 34-year-old man; and the gangrape and murder of a 16-year-old by a group of four teenagers, three........

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