How Sewa Nyaya Utthan’s Project Sankalp is Securing India’s Campuses from Predatory Gangs

On 31 July 2025, Sewa Nyaya Utthan Foundation launched Project SANKALP, an on-campus gender safety awareness and education initiative, targeting more than 100 colleges in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh.

The project is designed to make college campuses ragging-free, gender-sensitive and communally safe through orientation sessions, legal workshops, raising field leaders for intervention on ground and pledge drives.

The initiative was launched as a response to a series of disturbing cases reported from Bhopal in March-April 2025 involving drugging, blackmail, rape, and forced religious conversions of young women by predatory communal gangs.

National Human Rights Commission member Priyank Kanoongo flagged the possibility of organised criminal networks operating behind these patterns as culprits were from a specific community while victims from another.

Project SANKALP is a collaborative initiative between SNU and Network for Access to Justice and Multidisciplinary Outreach Foundation.

The project runs parallel to SNU’s national legal advocacy campaigns, including a Supreme Court intervention petition opposing the lowering of age of sexual consent, supported by survivor testimonies and a research study sponsored by SNU and co-authored by IIT-IIM graduate and data scientist Sanjeev Newar.

IMPACT SO FAR

Sessions at Sage University:

Project SANKALP conducted multiple awareness sessions, engaging over 200 students across the BBA, MBA, BTech, LLB, and Pharma streams.

The sessions focused on identifying grooming red flags, legal rights under constitutional and criminal law, and preventive strategies for campus safety.

Students expressed shock at real-world case studies shared by the facilitators, leading to spontaneous discussions on peer-led vigilance, collective reporting, and institutional accountability.

Workshop at TRUBA Institute:

A dedicated workshop for 100+ engineering students decoded red flags of communal grooming, ragging-linked coercion, and blackmail traps.

Campus authorities formally committed to zero-tolerance policies and institutional cooperation with the SANKALP team.

Engagement at LNCT & Science:

Reaching 200+ students from Engineering and Pharmacy at Lakshmi Narayan College of Technology & Science, this session emphasised preventive mapping of local risks, anonymous feedback, and creation of campus-specific replication modules.

LNCT’s engagement is now being documented as a template for future replications across MP.

Why Sankalp

The Crisis:

College campuses should be safe spaces for knowledge and growth, not hubs for sexual exploitation, trafficking, or forced conversions. Reports of communal gangs preying upon vulnerable students have raised national alarm.

The Vision:

Project SANKALP integrates legal literacy, gender justice, and communal harmony under one actionable model.

It seeks to ensure no student falls prey to exploitation or coercion traps again, while also generating research-backed evidence for policy reforms and Supreme Court advocacy.