Post by : Rameen Ariff

Authorities in Bengaluru have taken into custody 21-year-old engineering student Jeevan Gowda on charges of allegedly raping a fellow student within a male restroom at a private engineering college in South Bengaluru. The unsettling event occurred on October 10 and has sparked widespread alarm across the city. The victim, a seventh-semester student at the same institution, lodged a complaint five days post-incident, leading to prompt police intervention.

As per the First Information Report (FIR), both the accused and the survivor were peers, although Gowda had been struggling academically due to multiple backlogs. On the day of the incident, the survivor met Gowda to retrieve personal items. Later, during a lunch break, he reportedly made several attempts to call her to the architecture block situated on the seventh floor. When she sought to leave after an alleged forced kiss, he is said to have followed her to the sixth floor, where he allegedly pulled her into a men’s restroom and sexually assaulted her.

Investigators confirmed that Jeevan Gowda locked the restroom door and took the victim's phone during the attack. Disturbingly, the FIR notes that he later contacted her asking, “Do you need a pill?” The assault is believed to have transpired between 1:30 PM and 1:50 PM. As there were no CCTV cameras on the floor of the incident, authorities are now examining both forensic and digital evidence.

After the event, the survivor shared her ordeal with two close friends before updating her parents, who supported her in filing a report at the Hanumanthanagar police station. Police executed a crime scene reconstruction on Thursday to gather additional evidence, and Jeevan Gowda has been remanded to judicial custody since.

This grave campus rape case has prompted significant political backlash. R Ashoka, the Leader of Opposition in the Karnataka Legislative Assembly, lambasted the ruling Congress government for its apparent failure to maintain law and order, highlighting a staggering 979 sexual assaults reported in Karnataka over the past four months, with 114 occurring in Bengaluru alone. Ashoka deemed the government's inaction as a “moral and administrative failure” and called for the National Commission for Women (NCW) to dispatch a fact-finding mission while demanding immediate actions to safeguard women and children in the state.

The private engineering college has not yet made any official comments regarding the incident. Meanwhile, investigations continue, stressing that campus-related sexual violence must be addressed. The arrest of Jeevan Gowda highlights the pressing need for improved safety protocols in educational institutions throughout Bengaluru and Karnataka.

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