This post is a part of Periodपाठ, a campaign by Youth Ki Awaaz in collaboration with WSSCC to highlight the need for better menstrual hygiene management in India. Click here to find out more.
This post is a part of Periodपाठ, a campaign by Youth Ki Awaaz in collaboration with WSSCC to highlight the need for better menstrual hygiene management in India. Click here to find out more.
On Monday, 1oth February, 68 undergraduate students at Sahjanand Girls Institute (SSGI) in Bhuj, Gujarat, were stripped to check if they were menstruating after a used sanitary pad was found in the garden outside the hostel.
On 14 February, Friday, The Gujarat State Women Commission (GSWC) ordered the state police to investigate the incident. And the National Commission for Women said an inquiry team would be set up to investigate the matter.
The Dean of the institute, Darshana Dholakia, had earlier said that the matter was related to the hostel and that they had sought the “permission” of the girls.
“Matter is related to the hostel and has nothing to do with university or college. Everything happened with girls’ permission. Nobody was forced for it. Nobody touched them,” said Dholakia.
One of the students who was asked to strip commented that it was “sheer mental torture and had no words to describe it.”
Some parents of the students have also planned to lodge an FIR against the institute and its principal, Rita Rangia. “I do believe in rules, but they have no right to torture my daughter in this manner,” said the father of one of the girls.
Even after two girls confessed to it, the principal and the hostel wardens had insisted on stripping the girls. According to reports, the hostel has even made it compulsory for the girls to shift to the basement and use separate utensils while they are menstruating.
As much as the incident is shameful, it is not the first time girls were stripped to check whether they were menstruating.
These incidents only go to show how menstruating girls and women are viewed in our patriarchal society, as ‘dirty and impure’. If finding a used sanitary pad upsets college authorities so much, they can establish facilities for better disposal of the pads.
Women Trainees Allegedly Made To Stand Naked In A Group For Medical Test In Gujarat – Daily Health And Wealth Advisors
[…] shocking event comes days after the students of a girls’ college in Gujarat’s Bhuj town were allegedly forced by the hostel authorities to take off their undergarments, to prove they […]