A United States returned assistant nurse has accused of being molested and raped by some of the farmers present at the Tikri border, as per a report.
Taking to Twitter, a social media user Shivani Dhillon claimed that supporters of Dr Swaiman Singh, one of the prominent organisers of the protest, have recently harassed a woman, whose identity is yet to be revealed.
She shared the snippets victim posted on her Instagram account, recounting how she was molested at the protest site.
The victim narrated that when she came to the border, she was asked to live in the centre established by Dr Swaiman Singh at the Tikri protest site with other women protestors. She revealed that the male volunteers made it uneasy for her and she was afraid to stay alone after other female staffs had to leave.
“There were women protestors still in the other room, and I asked a few of them to sleep in my room as I didn’t want to be left alone,” the nurse said.
Shocking news!!!
Molestation and rape incident reported from Tikri Border. Punjabi nursing assistant molested and raped by criminal elements in disguise as farmers. Why no one is reporting and taking note. A detailed story on the molestation & rape in this thread. Must read. pic.twitter.com/0SqULwxms1— Shivani dhillon (@shivani_sikh) June 4, 2021
She mentioned that Dr Singh’s followers passed lewd comments on her and accused her of being in a romantic/sexual relationship with another volunteer.
However, when she reported the incident to Dr Singh, considering her safety, Dr Singh ignored the seriousness of the situation and said, “this wasn’t America”, and that those volunteers had been here for 4-5 months, while she had been at the protest site for only 2-3 days.
“The next day the first thing I went to Dr Singh and told him that I needed to talk to him about something imp. We had a chat in the noon where I told him that his volunteers made me uncomfortable. To which his reaction was – I cannot take care of your safety. That he will leave me back to Singhu and will call me when the women doctors were here. That this wasn’t America etc,” the women noted her in post.
“They weren’t used to woman giving it back to them or listening to ‘No’, and their fragile ego had been shattered to pieces by my actions. Hence the slut-shaming. I thought it would end once I left the protest (and I shudder to think how many more women would have left coz of the rampant sexism, misogyny, and the harassment faced at the hands of these men! inclusive space much?)” the victim shared her story.
The incident makes the second such incident in a span of a month. Earlier a 25-year old women activist hailing from West Bengal was raped and blackmailed by the goons at the farmers’ protest at the Delhi-Haryana Tikri border.