If you want to help Indian women stay safe, one overture that won't be embraced is giving them a curfew. That's what one politician has discovered after his remarks following what one woman says was her near-kidnapping. Per the BBC, DJ Varnika Kundu was driving home Friday night just after midnight when she was allegedly chased by two men in an SUV. She described what she says was a stalking ordeal on Facebook, which ended in the arrest of two men, including the son of a prominent BJP politician. "I'm … lucky, because I'm not lying raped and murdered in a ditch somewhere," she wrote online. Enter another BJP pol, Ramveer Bhatti, who told CNN-News 18 that maybe Kundu should bear some responsibility. "The girl should not have gone out at 12 in the night," he said of the 29-year-old. "Why was she driving so late in the night?"
This didn't sit well with actress Divya Spandana, aka Ramya, who blasted Bhatti's "regressive" statements on WhatsApp, then posted a Twitter pic of herself at night, seemingly in a vehicle, with the hashtag #AintNoCinderella. Hundreds of Indian women have since joined in, uploading their own photos showing them going out and having a good time "after-hours." One notable poster: Sharmistha Mukherjee, daughter of India's ex-President Pranab Mukherjee and a politician in her own right. "If I'm out at 12am, it DOES NOT mean I'm to be raped, molested, chased. My dignity is my right 24X7," she tweeted. Journalist Palak Sharma, who put up her own now-viral pic showing her winking and enjoying a nighttime beverage, says she's received both messages of support and ones calling her "whore" and "slut." "But I'm not afraid," she tells the BBC. "Nothing is going to stop us." (More India stories.)
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