Students of Kerala college hold 'laptop protest' against moral policing

Young men and women from an engineering college in Thiruvananthapuram sat on each other's lap and posed for pictures at a public waiting shed to protest against moral policing by locals. They called it the 'laptop protest'.

A TOI report said this happened on Wednesday after some people in Sreekaryam broke the bench at the waiting shed in the local bus stop to prevent male and female students from sitting close to each other.

A few second year students from the nearby College of Engineering, Trivandrum decided to clap back at the moral police. They proceeded to the waiting shed, perched on the laps of colleagues of the opposite gender with arms around the shoulders, and clicked pictures. They then shared the pictures on social media.


Their post went viral on social media with many lauding them for their act of defiance.

The mayor of Thiruvananthapuram, Arya Rajendran, visited the area and promised to build a new 'gender-neutral' waiting shed.

Some students complained they were often subjected to lewd comments while they waited together at the bus stop. "Our photo was not a fight against the residents, but there is a need to educate them to view students without the barrier of gender,” Nandana PM, one of the students, told TOI.

The students said they came under a lot of criticism too, and that it was "not unexpected".