Heroes of Tilak Nagar
When women leave home to go to work, study or for other purposes, they feel a constant threat of possible harassment. These incidents of harassment in public places are common across the country. But often these incidents go unpunished-because no one raises a voice against the perpetrators. In New Delhi's Tilak Nagar area too, a group of boys were harassing girls on their way to their tuitions. But Sahil Sharma, who ran a pizza outlet close by, chose to stand up against it.
Sahil tried to speak to the harassers and talk some sense into them. But the boys were not too pleased with Sahil's intervention. They threatened to teach him a lesson soon. A while later, they came back with a bigger group and aimed a gun at Sharma's friend. “We started fighting back,” says Amrit, Sahil's friend. The boys fired 12-13 rounds of bullets in the air. “I got hurt on my right hand,” says Akshay Sharma, another friend of Sahil's.
Ultimately the goons were driven away by the collective effort of the community. The result of this brave action is that incidents of harassment have gone down considerably in Tilak Nagar. This only goes to show that if people choose to stand up against harassment of women, there is a high possibility that women won't have to walk around with fear in their hearts any more.