Let men sit at home at night.
It sounds deliberately provocative, huh? It is meant to.

Because every time a woman is assaulted after dark, we somehow end up having the same conversationabout her. Where was she? Why was she out? Who was she with? Why was she there at that hour? Could she not have gone home earlier?

After the alleged gang rape of a 17-year-old girl at Delhi’s Aastha Kunj Park, that old instinct has surfaced again.

Authorities have moved towards tighter controls around parks after sunset, while women and students are once again being told, directly or indirectly, to reconsider their presence in public spaces at night.

I find that response profoundly difficult to accept.

The girl was allegedly attacked on September 21 after she and a 17-year-old male friend went to Kalkaji Mandir and later entered Aastha Kunj Park.

According to the police, three men approached them pretending to be police officers. They allegedly intimidated the two teenagers, separated the girl from her friend and, took her towards a secluded part of the park, where she was sexually assaulted.

The three accused have since been arrested.

What happened to her is a crime. Her presence in the park was not.

That distinction seems painfully obvious, yet women are constantly forced to make it.

Aastha Kunj is spread across 142 acres. It is not a tiny neighbourhood garden where one missing light could be dismissed as an isolated maintenance problem.

It is one of Delhi’s large public green spaces, and reports after the incident found serious gaps in its security.

The Indian Express reported that the guard cabin closest to the alleged crime spot had no electricity. There were no CCTV cameras inside the park, and most of the cameras at the entry gates were reportedly non-functional.

Hindustan Times found that, across seven entry points, only one had two guards during a daytime visit. In the evening, one gate was properly lit while another, close to the area where the assault allegedly occurred, was in complete darkness.

The report also noted that the park had a history of security concerns, including an earlier attack on two people and a subsequent robbery.

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Residents have since spoken about poor lighting, broken sections of the boundary wall, inadequate security and the difficulty of monitoring such a vast area.

Some residents’ groups also alleged that parts of Delhi’s parks have become places where people gather to drink or use narcotics because of weak monitoring.
So what exactly are we asking women to do?
Stay away from the park?
Come home before sunset?
Avoid secluded places?
Avoid being outside unless there are enough people around?

How many such instructions can a woman realistically follow before the city itself becomes a collection of places she is expected to avoid?

The government has announced a safety audit of Delhi’s parks following the incident. Lieutenant Governor Taranjit Singh Sandhu directed officials to examine lighting, security, cleanliness and patrolling, and the Delhi Police was asked to strengthen beat patrols around parks, including through the deployment of women personnel.

Those are necessary steps. In fact, after what has now come to light, they are difficult to describe as anything other than overdue.

A park that has large stretches without adequate lighting needs lights. A park with dysfunctional cameras needs functioning cameras.

A park with seven entrances and inadequate guarding needs a proper security plan. A broken boundary needs to be repaired. A dark route used by thousands of students needs to be illuminated.

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They are basic responsibilities of a government that manages public infrastructure.

And this is where the conversation about Aastha Kunj becomes larger than one horrific crime.

Because a woman cannot be made safe simply by making her disappear from the place where she might be attacked.

Delhi Police’s audit of parks across the capital has already reportedly found widespread problems with CCTV coverage and lighting.

Around 1,500 parks were audited, including roughly 300 larger and prominent parks, with several green spaces found to have dark spots and inadequate surveillance.

That should concern the government far more than whether women are still using those parks after dark.

Because people will continue to live their lives after dark.
Students will leave college.
Women will finish work.
Nurses will leave hospitals.
Journalists will finish late shifts.
Domestic workers will travel home.

Women will meet friends, visit places of worship, go for walks, attend events, take public transport, return from dates, go to restaurants and simply exist outside their homes.

The night is not a private property reserved for men.

Yet women have been taught to treat it as one.

We are told that darkness is dangerous for women.

The students protesting in Delhi understand this perfectly.

Following the Aastha Kunj incident, students from several Delhi University colleges took to the streets. A solidarity march under the banner “Hum Auratein Azaad Hain” says that women do not want protection that comes in the form of confinement. They want public spaces that are actually safe.

That is not an unreasonable demand.

In fact, it is the bare minimum.

And yet our responses to violence against women so often travel in the opposite direction. A woman is assaulted, and her freedom becomes the variable that gets adjusted.

A college changes its timings. A hostel tightens its curfew. A park restricts access. A family tells its daughter to come home earlier.

The perpetrator becomes a criminal case.
The woman becomes a security protocol.
That is the part I cannot accept.

Lady Shri Ram College, located close to Aastha Kunj, suspended physical classes after the incident and sought increased police patrolling around the campus. Students have also raised concerns about a dark stretch near the college through which many of them travel after classes.

Imagine being a young woman studying in Delhi and being told that your college is now moving classes online because the public space outside it cannot be made safe.

What does that teach her?
That the solution to an unsafe environment is for her to retreat?
That the city will not change, so she must?
That the dark road stays dark, the park stays poorly guarded, the CCTV stays broken, and she simply has to plan her life around all of it?

That is not safety. That is surrender.

Of course, there are practical reasons to control access to a massive park at night. Multiple uncontrolled gates can make policing difficult.

A sprawling green space cannot be treated exactly like a busy commercial street. Closing certain entrances, increasing patrols and ensuring that visitors enter through monitored points can all be sensible security measures.

But those measures should be accompanied by an honest examination of why the space was allowed to become so vulnerable in the first place.

That is where the government deserves scrutiny.
Why were cameras not functioning?
Why was a guard cabin without electricity?
Why were there dark stretches inside and around a park of this size?
Why were broken boundary sections not repaired?
Why did residents have to repeatedly complain about poor upkeep and security?

And why does it take the alleged rape of a teenager for the state to suddenly discover that Delhi’s parks need to be properly lit and monitored?

Governments cannot keep announcing audits after women are harmed and then congratulate themselves for taking action. The real measure of governance is whether those failures are found before the next victim encounters them.

And there is another question that deserves to be asked, particularly in a case where the accused allegedly posed as policemen.

What kind of fear does the uniform carry when simply claiming to be an officer is enough to intimidate two young people?

The alleged perpetrators did not, according to police accounts, merely attack a girl. They allegedly used the authority associated with the police to isolate and control her and her friend. That makes the issue of public trust in law enforcement even more serious.

This is why I do not want another lecture about women being careful.

Women have been careful for generations.

We share live locations. We call our friends when we get into cabs. We hold our keys between our fingers. We pretend to be on phone calls. We avoid empty compartments. We check the back seat before getting into a car. We send photographs of number plates. We ask someone to stay awake until we reach home.

We have built entire survival rituals around the possibility of male violence.

These things may sound mundane beside a crime as horrific as this one. They are not. Public safety is built from mundane things.

It is built from lights that work, cameras that record, police who patrol, guards who are present and authorities who respond before something terrible happens.

And yes, men have a role in this conversation too. A much bigger one than we usually give them.

When a woman says she is afraid of walking home at night, the answer cannot always be another woman telling her which route to take.

Men need to examine the culture that makes harassment, intimidation and sexual violence possible and, at times, socially excusable.

Men need to challenge other men. Families need to raise boys who understand consent and boundaries. Institutions need to act when complaints are made.

And the government needs to stop confusing restriction with protection.

If the only way Delhi can make a park “safe” is by ensuring that women do not use it after sunset, then the government has not solved the safety problem. It has simply reduced the number of people exposed to it.

There is a huge difference.

So, let men sit at home at night if that is what it takes to make the city safe!