AMU students staged protest demanding arrest of all accused in Gulnaz case

Student's of Aligarh Muslim University on Saturday, 21 November staged a protest demonstration against the sexual harrassment and death of a 20 year old girl in Bihar's district Vaishali. The delay in the process of justice to the girl and family was questioned by them. A memorandum to Chief Minister of Bihar was also given by students through District Magistrate of Aligarh.

It demanded, all accused in the said case should be arrested, the Gulnaz case should be heard in fast track court, police should be sensitised in order to understand the severity of such cases, Nirbhaya fund should be utilised in order to provide justice in all such cases of rape, harrassment and violence against women and laws should be strictly amended and followed.

Sumaiyah Khan, student of LLB said,

"Every single day we come across such news against women and we really need to rework on our laws and amend them, we need to work on our education system to normalise education related to sex. We have to revisit our pattern of socialisation and upbringing.".

"We should keep on voicing such issues on every possible platform in order to get over such heinous crimes against women", she added.

Ghazala Ahmad, student of Journalism questioned the incompetency of state and centre government in delivering justice to women. While addressing the protest she said, " this incident happened during the Lok Sabha elections in Bihar, do we not need to question the past and present government of Bihar, what were they doing during their election campaigns? Did anyone of them talked about women safety and security?"

She further said, " when we have people sitting in power who encourage such crimes, then we need to shuffle who we call our leaders, we should look at the victim of crimes as "women" as "humans" not as dalit, muslim or hindu"

She discarded the law named as "love jihad" and said, "we need to work on our existing laws instead of playing communal politics in the name of religious values"

The Gulnaz Case:

Gulnaz Khatoon, 20, was burned after the accused poured kerosene over her in Rasoolpur village on October 30. She succumbed to death on Sunday.

The woman's family alleges the police is delaying in taking action against the accused, who were identified as Satish Kumar Rai, Chandan, and Vinod Rai.

Accused Satish Kumar Rai harrased Gulnaz to marry him,and when she refused to enter into an interfaith marriage with Rai. When she tried to resist that sexual harrassment, enraged with that response from Gulnaz, accused Satish Rai with his friends poured Kerosene on her and burned her.

After her death on 15th November, sunday, JusticeForGulnaz trended on Twitter on Monday as people expressed anguish at the delay in the registering of the case against the molestors and to demand justice.

It has been a week Nitish Kumar took over as chief minister for the fourth time after his Janata Dal United party won the Lok Sabha elections in alliance with the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Gulnaaz and her family still awaits justice.