Inside a well-lit, hand-painted room on the first floor of a house in Kanpur, scores of golden trophies, medals, badges and certificates stand in silent assemblies, like woeful attendees at a funeral. They belong to Sneha Chaurasiya, who was shot to death about 400 km away from home, inside the guarded premises of the prestigious Shiv Nadar University in Greater Noida, where she had been a student for the past three years.

“Sneha was a very bright and a special girl,” says a broken-hearted Raj Prakash Chaurasiya, Sneha’s father. As if to substantiate his claims, he points to the glittering pile of medals, neatly nestled in a Tupperware box and the trophies and sashes with her name on them. “Sneha was an award-winning state-level athlete and had won several prestigious tournaments and competitions. She had won awards for singing, dancing and was the editor of her school magazine. She was also her class topper,” he reiterates.

On May 18, when the phone rang at around 2.30 pm, the Chaurasiya family in Kanpur had no clue of what was to come. “The college authorities told us that our daughter had met with a serious accident and that we needed to come,” Raj Prakash recalls. When they reached the college about seven hours later, they were told that her daughter was shot dead by her classmate, Anuj. “He killed her at point blank range with an unlicensed country-made pistol,” he rasps, wincing. It was the same gun Anuj used to kill himself later.

Before he died by suicide, Anuj sent a 22-minute video to a university group in which he confessed to shooting her after a fallout between the two. They were purportedly in a relationship for two years. When Sneha decided to break up, Anuj said he couldn’t handle it. Some 400 km away in Amroha, Lokesh Singh, Anuj’s farmer father remains at a loss for words and requests to be left alone from the limelight. He doesn’t know why his son did what he did and wants his family to not be blamed for it. He also believes that if the college had taken action against the son on time and sent him home, maybe the boy and girl would have lived.

But that is what the college did not do. In an email dated March 14, addressed to college authorities—Tulika Chandra and Anshu Narendra Paliwal on their official college IDs—Sneha outlined several “violent incidents” that she had been facing in the past few months. Apparently, Anuj was not ready to move on. This is what she wrote: “It has been the 4th time now that he has shown violence upon me in a span of two months. There are scars on my body which are proof of the high level of violence. Also once, he had held my throat so hard that it choked me into an unconscious state. I am suffering from seriously bad mental health. I have started getting panic attacks due to this. Today he has given me an open death threat and said that he will call up my parents and tell them all about our relationship.”

Initially, Sneha did not want to file a formal complaint as she did not want the authorities to involve her parents. At that time, the parents were unaware of Sneha’s relationship. However, she sought the help of the college to feel “safe and happy” in the campus again. “We are in the same working and academic space. I want to get out of this without involving my parents,” Sneha wrote.

She also stated that she was writing the email without discussing?the matter with her parents. Sneha’s parents allege that the college took no action on Sneha’s complaint and it is this negligence on the college’s part that led to the loss of two lives. The family also alleges that the college tried to hide its role and destroyed evidence that could implicate them. “We found the emails on social media. When the news went viral, they responded by dismissing the issue as a lover’s spat, but did not deny the emails,” he states. It was only after the emails that the police filed the an FIR on May 25, they claim, in which they have allegedly named Shiv Nadar University.

In response to the allegations of inaction against Sneha’s complaints of violence, the university’s executive director for financial operations (EDFO) had told a national newspaper that “such fights are common among friends, and we provided counselling to them”. Outlook tried to connect with Shiv Nadar University for further clarifications but got no response till the time of publishing.

“Despite Sneha stating clearly that her life was in danger, the college did nothing. They are claiming to the media that they did counselling. This is wish-wash. This boy was clearly disturbed and mere counselling was not enough,” Sneha’s uncle Anil Chaurasiya states. No one from Shiv Nadar University has reached out to the family, and they have blocked the email through which Sneha wrote to them, he adds.

In the days following the murder-suicide, the police arrested three persons in connection with the crime. “One is an ambulance driver who befriended him. The others include the ambulance driver’s employer and his brother. These were the people who supplied Anuj with the weapon,” confirms Deputy Commissioner of Police, Greater Noida, Saad Miya Khan. When asked about how a student like Anuj could procure a gun so easily for just a small amount of cash and smuggle it inside college—where he kept it for 30 days before the incident—he avers, “UP Police is doing a lot to control the unlicensed gun trade and gun violence in the state, especially in Greater Noida area where it’s a challenge. But we are also planning to conduct safety workshops with students and universities and get educational institutions to implement strict baggage checking systems at entry and exit points,” he adds.

However, Delhi Commission for Women Chief Swati Maliwal says: “We have strong laws against gender violence, but until there is swiftness of punishment for crimes, people are not going to be scared. Six rape cases are reported every day in the capital and these are just cases that are being reported, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Girls are facing all kinds of abuse and they are unable to even report them, because when they do, nothing happens,” she states.

She adds that in cases like the Shiv Nadar shooting, the inherent reluctance for educational institutions to act on protecting their women students adds to the plight of victims. In most cases, institutions show complete apathy towards the safety concerns of students, and when they do, it’s in the form of increasing restrictions for women students. “What about schooling the boys?” asks Maliwal. There is also a complete lack of empathy or even respect for a woman alleging harassment or violence by a man, especially if it’s someone they have been known to associate with in any way.

In Kanpur, Sneha’s family accuses the college of trying to build a false narrative around Sneha’s character to skirt around their failure to address a safety concern raised by a student. “They are trying to brush it off as an affair gone wrong. But our daughter was so much more than that. And as soon as they became aware of the ongoing violence (as we can see in the emails), and did nothing, they became party to the crime,” says Sneha’s father, who is an advocate.

On June 10, Sneha would have turned 21. “She was our eldest daughter. And she was so talented. She won so many awards for the state, her school and college. Her loss is not just a loss to us, but to the whole country,” says Sneha’s elderly grandmother. She sits beside Sneha’s mother who has been rendered mute since the incident, her swollen eyes downcast, and she trails off, speaking of how her granddaughter always greeted her first before everyone else, even her mother, every time she came home. The family has little hope with the police investigation. They are powerful people, the Chaurasiyas claim, referring to the university. But their grit is firm. “We will fight till the end,” Raj Prakash affirms.

Rakhi Bose in Kanpur

(This appeared in the print as 'Broken Dreams')