On 31 July 2013 when a student brutally hacked a female fellowstudent and then killed himself in a classroom of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, it was not a "heat-of-the-moment" act but a cold-blooded planned move to punish her. Despite carrying a pistol he did not shoot her but grievously wounded her in front of teachers and students because such "punishment" needs an audience. Also, it is not surprising that it occurred on the campus of a progressive university because the tension between liberal values at the formal level and our feudal moorings in patriarchal structures gets stretched the most in spaces such as that.
