Chaitanya Lakkimsetti will deliver a lecture on ‘Hang the Rapists Immediately: Rape Vigilantism, State Violence, and Impunity in Contemporary India’. It will be chaired by Ananya Vajpeyi.
ZOOM ID: 86836871561 PASSCODE: csdsdelhi
This talk draws on a larger research project tentatively titled “Demanding Death: Rape, the Death Penalty, and Vigilante Violence in Contemporary India.” It focuses on the 2019 Disha case in Hyderabad, in which a 25-year-old veterinarian was gang-raped and murdered. In the aftermath of this incident, widespread public outrage and demands for immediate retribution culminated in the extrajudicial killing of the four accused men by the police. Using this case as a point of departure, the talk investigates how sexual violence has emerged as a crucial site for the articulation and mobilization of vigilante violence in contemporary India.
Chaitanya Lakkimsetti is Associate Professor of Sociology at Texas A&M University with a faculty affiliation in women’s and gender studies. She is also the author of Legalizing Sex: Sexual Minorities, AIDS, and Citizenship in India (2020); and the co-author of #MeToo and the Politics of Transnational Feminism: An Anthology (2025).
Ananya Vajpeyi is Professor at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.
Friday, 14 November 2025, 4 pm, Seminar Room and Zoom https://bit.ly/438TCwR
