Two people, including the son of Haryana Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief, were arrested for allegedly stalking the daughter of a senior IAS officer.
Vikas Barala, the 23-year-old son of BJP’s Subhash Barala, was arrested on Friday night along with his friend Ashish Kumar, 27. They were later released on bail.
The incident
The incident occurred with 29-year-old disc jockey (DJ), Varnika Kundu.
The two arrested – Vikas is a law student at Kurukshetra college and Ashish is a law graduate.
In her Facebook post, Varnika said that she was driving home from the Sector 8 market, Chandigarh at around 12.15 am on Friday night when she noticed an SUV following her as she entered sector 7.
The car, a white TATA Safari, had two men in it; on the driver’s seat was Vikas Barala. Both the men were drunk and kept chasing her as she attempted to lose their trail.
On Madhya Marg, headed to Panchkula, she dialled police helpline 100, explained the situation, gave her exact location and where she was headed.
For nearly 10 km, the SUV stayed alongside her car and continuously tried to corner her. She was scared, panicky, bewildered and half in tears, read her Facebook post.
They blocked her car for the final time near Hotel Solitaire. Ashish came out and banged on her car window, trying to open the door.
“Just as he did this, I saw a PCR [vehicle] pull up… and a couple of cops ran out towards the SUV, nabbing it just in time, because they were blocked in by traffic,” she said in her Facebook post.
“The 2 boys, who of course, are from influential families with political connections, have been arrested and the complaint has been filed…If this is what women deal with in one of the safer cities in the country, where are we going? I find it shocking, that in a place with cameras at every light and cops every 200 metres, these boys thought they could either get into my car, or take me into theirs, just because they’re from an influential background,” she continued.
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WAS ALMOST KIDNAPPED ON A CHANDIGARH ROAD LAST NIGHT.That being said, I’d like to take a moment to commend and thank…
Posted by Varnika Kundu on Saturday, August 5, 2017
In a world where women are blamed for the attacks on them
Kuldeep Barala, a member of the Barala family – whose Facebook bio reads ‘worked at Bharatiya Janata Party’ – shared a picture of Varnika with two men, implying that she was drunk at the time of the incident. His post has now been deleted.
The picture shared by Kuldeep Barala, which is now deleted
In another post, which is also deleted, Kuldeep shared a picture of Varnika with alcohol glasses. He intended to raise questions about her character while painting the picture that the incident was being blown out of proportion by the opposition to malign BJP’s image.
The post by Kuldeep Barala which is also deleted
BJP Haryana vice president Ramveer Bhatti blamed Varnika too.
The girl should not have gone out at 12 in the night: Ramveer Bhatti, Haryana BJP on Chandigarh stalking incident pic.twitter.com/Mu3FcIkuOB
— News18 (@CNNnews18) August 7, 2017
All of us remember the night of 16 December 2012 – when Jyoti ‘Nirbhaya’ Singh was brutally raped by six men in a bus and thrown on the roadside, left to die.
Jyoti could not recover from her injuries; most of her intestines had to be removed, she bled internally and was kept on life support. Her rapists tortured her so mercilessly that she suffered brain damage, pneumonia, abdominal infection, organ failure, among others. Two weeks after her assault, she died.
At the heart of India’s capital, Delhi, and worldwide, thousands came out in her support and demanded that her murderers be brought to justice.
Meanwhile, there were also those blaming Jyoti for her rape.
The men who took turns to rape her said that it was her fault that she fought back. The ones who inserted an iron rod into her body said that she was at fault because a ‘decent’ girl won’t roam around at nine o’clock at night. She needed to be ‘taught a lesson,’ suggested the lecherous men who killed her.
The defence lawyer too resorted to victim blaming and said, “If you keep sweets on the street then dogs will come and eat them.”
Five years after Jyoti’s death, we learnt nothing.
Varnika’s father, Haryana IAS officer Virender Kundu, had to take the recourse of social media to gain people’s support for his daughter.
“As a father of two daughters, I feel compelled to take this matter to its logical conclusion. The goons must be punished, and the law must take its course. As would be expected, the goons are from influential families. We all know most …
