Some of the girls who took admission to arts courses in Derozio Memorial College on Wednesday. Picture by Sanat Kumar Sinha

Derozio Memorial College has received several hundred applications for admission to its four BSc honours courses, only one of them from a girl. It’s not that girls do not want to study physics, chemistry, mathematics or computer science at the Rajarhat college: they dare not because of safety concerns.

Like in most colleges, science classes at Derozio Memorial College, half a kilometre from City Centre New Town, often stretch late into the afternoon but as The Telegraph had reported on June 19 (What they couldn’t tell the CM), the girls leave the campus by 3pm because the road home for many of them is too dangerous after sunset.

The rape and murder of a student of the college on June 7 while she was on her way back home at Kamduni village in Barasat has only made the situation worse.

A majority of students at the 17-year-old college — the only one in the Rajarhat-Gopalpur Municipality, it was established to make higher education accessible to girls from the area — come from Kamduni, about 8km away, and surrounding villages like Kharibari, Langalpota, Haroa, Lauhati, Patharghata, Sekharpur and Kanchkal, mostly from poor families.

“Fear has gripped the surrounding areas after one of our students was raped and murdered. Girls do not want to study science at our college only because they do not want to stay back till late afternoon for practical classes,” said a teacher overseeing admissions this year.

Of the college’s 3,465 students, 1,450 are women, but such is the fear that not a single girl turned up on Tuesday, the first day of the BA general admission. Even on Wednesday and Thursday, very few girls turned up.

At the end of the first round, the lone applicant in science has taken admission in the physics (honours) course. She is from nearby New Town, and not the villages.

While the rape and murder happened in the early afternoon, the number of rogue men on the road leading to the villages increases in the evening.

Paramita Chakraborty, the acting director of the Centre for Women Studies of Jadavpur University, said the Kamduni incident and its impact on the Derozio college admissions showed why a crime against a woman should not be seen in isolation.

“The rape and murder of one woman has affected the education of hundreds of young women across so many villages. This is how a single rape can have a long-term impact on women’s empowerment,” said Chakraborty.

When Derozio Memorial College had started operating from a nearby school in 1996, 50 per cent of its 65 students were women and classes were held after the school gave over, between 4pm and 8.30pm.

“The huge residential complexes that are mushrooming around the college were not there. The area used to be deserted but not a single student complained about feeling scared to return home after 8.30pm,” said Ajit Banik, a former professor of Calcutta University’s chemical engineering department and the chairman of a preparatory committee that was set up by the erstwhile Left Front government to develop infrastructure for science courses at Derozio college.

Sunanda Halder, teaching at Derozio since 2000 and currently the head of the chemistry department, also said the place was safer for women before.

But that is scarcely any consolation for those whose choice of stream is being dictated by security concerns now.

“I wanted to study science and had the marks in Madhyamik but I did not because my father would not have been able to afford to admit me in tuition classes and I would have to study at Derozio after HS and attend practical classes till evening,” said the 18-year-old daughter of a Lauhati rickshaw-puller, standing in the queue for BA admission on Tuesday.

“When efforts are on across the world to get more women into science laboratories, we cannot lose girl students to other streams,” said a science teacher at the college.

Principal Dibyendu Talapatra felt that poor transport facilities were making the situation worse.

He has written to state transport minister Madan Mitra to introduce new buses between the college and the villages but has not received a response yet.