National Law School Student Attacked on Bangalore Campus; Outrage Over Safety

A student at the National Law School of India University in Bangalore was sexually assaulted on campus in October 2012, in a case that drew furious attention to the safety of women at India's most prestigious educational institutions.

The student was attacked on the university campus at Nagarbhavi — an environment she should have been able to expect as safe. Police registered a case, and arrests followed as the investigation moved quickly in the glare of media attention. The identity of the survivor was protected, as the law requires.

The outrage was immediate. Students and faculty at NLSIU — the institution that trains India's future lawyers and judges — demanded that the university lead by example: better lighting, controlled campus access, security infrastructure, and clear, responsive protocols for reporting and investigating sexual assault. Women's rights groups joined the protests, arguing that residential universities, which house young women far from their families and social networks, bore a particular obligation to keep them safe.

The case became one more data point in a national reckoning with sexual violence that would intensify two months later with the December 2012 Delhi gang rape — but it was significant on its own terms: an assault inside the gates of the country's most elite law school, against a student of the law, in a place that was supposed to be different.

Reporting on a criminal case; identities of survivors are protected. No finding of guilt is implied beyond what courts have decided.