Calcutta, Sept. 16: Brinda Dasgupta suffered what so many young women are subjected to on the streets every day. But the 22-year-old today did what most young women rarely do — lodge a complaint against her anonymous harasser.

The resident of New Alipore is not very hopeful of the “nondescript man” on a bicycle being caught, but she refuses to give up without a fight.

This is what the first-year post-graduate student of Jadavpur University told The Telegraph hours after the horror walk:

“I was walking down a lane beside the New Alipore Association from my house to the Taratala auto stand around 9.45am. I vaguely noticed a man cycling down from the opposite side. All of a sudden, the man swerved right into my path, groped me in a horrible manner and sped off.

“For two seconds I was in shock. Then I turned around and started running after the cyclist. I screamed to the people on the road, ‘Stop him! Stop him!’ Guards, domestics and vegetable-sellers on the road looked on, disinterested.

“I kept telling them that the man on the cycle had attacked me and begged them to stop him. Two or three people started after him, but as if they were on a casual morning jog. By then, the man had cycled into another lane and was gone. He was wearing a striped T-shirt and trousers, I think.

“I called up my mother, who asked me to come back home. I said I had to go to college. But halfway down the road, I broke down.... Back home, my mother called up the New Alipore police station and asked for the OC but no one cooperated. It was only after we got in touch with the police commissioner that two cops came over to our house. They claimed that this was the first harassment complaint they had received in a year-and-half. “That’s so strange. The lanes of New Alipore have become nightmarish. Walking to the auto stand or going to the local market, my sisters and I get harassed all the time. My grandfather built our house in 1955, and I have grown up here. Do I now have to live in fear?”

When The Telegraph posed Brinda’s questions to top cop Gautam Mohan Chakrabarti, he said: “I have spoken to her and the case has been handed over to the detective department. The unfortunate incident is a wake-up call for us to be more alert.”