Venky faculty, students say nothing was amiss, thought it was `just another Sanskrit dropout'

A 21-year-old third-year student of Sri Venkateshwara College, University of Delhi, Bhavna Yadav, was ruthlessly murdered by her parents and uncle on Saturday because she married Abhishek Seth a boy from another caste and region. Shocking? DU students disagree.“It's not shocking in the least it happens all the time. Maybe not all of them go to the extent of murder, but harassment of students for inter-region or inter-caste marriage is very common.Very few parents are cool about it, and that too, not openly ,“ says Apurv Jain, a DU student.
“The fact that she was getting married in her third year of college, and nobody bothered to find out why she was doing this, says something. She was a Sanskrit student. A student from the English or Economics, or even History , department wouldn't have had the same treatment. I'm all for what other people call desi courses, but the environment is different. There, it's common for girls to get married or drop out of college before they graduate, which is fine as long as they are doing so by choice. Problem is nobody bothers to find out if it's by choice. It's sad but hardly shocking that this happened,“ says Yamini*, a student of Venky .
“This is probably not the university's responsibility `technically'. But the university and the college could have helped. Because I really don't know who else could have. Our campus is still full of people who come from very regressive families. But campus is the place where they find out that it's important to have an opinion.That she was an adult and could have asked for police protection, or that she could have confided in the college's women's forum, might not have even occurred to the girl. There's got to be some difference between a village and a feminist DU college, right?“ says Prerna*, a student of LSR.
Hema Reddy , Venky's principal, says, “She was a very regular student, but had become slightly irregular in the past few months.But nobody expected this to happen. We are taken aback, because in today's day and age, you would expect parents to get counselled and approach things differently .“
Harsha Kumari, a Sanksrit teacher from the college, says, “Padhai mein Bhavna below average hi thi, par waise achhi ladki thi. In October, when I conducted a class test, she told me, `Ma'am, mujhse nahin hoga. Main baad mein padh kar doongi.' She had been particularly irregular the last semester, but as teachers, we don't interfere in students' personal lives, so we could not have known that there's something wrong. We couldn't have asked her why she's getting married in third year. She could have spoken to us or the women's development cell, but chose not to.“
Vikas Sharma, another teacher from the department of Sanskrit, says, “We usually don't talk to students about anything but the syllabus or about social issues. Even the students are busy studying for their approaching exams and we wouldn't want to distract them, so we haven't talked about this yet.“
(*Name changed on request)