Pune Bus Rape: Thought Maharashtra Safer Than Delhi’: Working-Class Women on Swargate Case, Victim Blaming

Lavanya Anand, 28, a migrant worker from Jharkhand who works at an office in Maharashtra’s Pune, is a frequent commuter from the busy Swargate depot and sometimes takes the same bus route as the 26-year-old woman allegedly raped inside a parked state-run bus last week.

“I lived in New Delhi before this and always thought Maharashtra was safer for women in that way. But look at this — It’s almost like the Nirbhaya case,” Anand tells The Quint.

The incident occurred at the crack of dawn on 25 February at the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC)’s Swargate bus terminus, just a few metres away from the local police station. After a prolific “man-hunt” that lasted over 60 hours, the accused, 37-year-old Dattatreya Ramdas Gade, was arrested from a field in Shirur district where he lives.

Relieved as she was after the arrest, Anand says that the incident (and its aftermath) has left her triggered. “I don’t know any girl or woman my age or older who hasn’t faced such things like groping, harassment or at least verbal abuse in public spaces, including myself,” she tells The Quint.

Anand was referring to a sitting Maharashtra minister’s controversial statement on the incident.

Gade’s lawyer Sajid Shah, too, had argued in court that the intercourse was “consensual”, as the woman willingly boarded the bus with no signs of struggle. “She could have screamed. She could have chosen to not enter the bus. He did not force her. It was clearly an act of consent,” Shah told reporters.