'India Is Slowly Becoming Afghanistan': Chinmayi Sripada Condemns Kalkaji Gang-Rape Case

Singer and activist Chinmayi Sripada has criticised police handling and women’s safety in Delhi after the Kalkaji gang-rape, which led Lady Shri Ram College for Women (LSR) to move classes online after an early-morning shootout near its back gate.

Chinmayi Sripada slams Delhi police after Kalkaji gang-rape case

She linked the two developments to what she described as a wider collapse in public safety for women in the capital.

She also questioned claims of economic progress when basic security remained weak on the ground. Sripada said a rise in hyper-religious rhetoric, combined with tolerance for male lawlessness, was pushing women’s rights backwards.

She wrote on Instagram, “India’s safety for women has come to this level in the National Capital,” she wrote, and added that “India is slowly becoming an Afghanistan” because the capital “cannot control its rapists.”

In another post on X, she wrote, “One of the premier colleges in India in the National Capital suspends classes due to gangrape. Some classes shifted online. This is enough to show how far we have come for women’s safety so much so that girls and their families think it is unsafe to send them to get educated. Beti Padhao is going to the docks Beti Bachao was anyway a warning (sic).”

This is not Sripada’s first intervention on violence against women. She has repeatedly criticised what she sees as institutional inaction when women report abuse or assault.

After the incident, the college shifted all lectures online.

Police stopped and shot a key suspect in the Kalkaji minor gang-rape case roughly 50 metres from the college’s back gate. The pre-dawn gunfire close to campus left students shaken.

The LSR Students’ Union convened an emergency meeting to discuss perimeter security and press for stricter safety protocols around the campus.

Police confirmed that all three suspects in the Kalkaji gang-rape case remain in custody as the investigation proceeds.