Announcement: Sewa Nyaya Utthan Expands Its Landmark Educational Program Against Sexual Grooming to Meerut

Meerut, Uttar Pradesh | September 2026: A comprehensive, state-recognised on-campus gender-safety program developed by Sewa Nyaya Utthan (SNU) Foundation and a partner organisation, in response to a rape-blackmail-forced-conversion racket that emerged at a Bhopal college, has now expanded to Meerut, Uttar Pradesh.

The first workshops in Meerut were conducted at Shaheed Mangal Pandey College and IIMT University this week, with students from streams including Agriculture, Science and Technology, and Biotechnology.

The program has reached approximately 300 students in Meerut within its first week.

Born from the Bhopal Crisis

The program, titled Sankalp (read here), was designed by SNU Foundation and Network for Access to Justice and Multidisciplinary Outreach (NAMO) Foundation following a series of deeply disturbing incidents that emerged from a Bhopal engineering college in April 2025.

These incidents involving sexual grooming, communal targeting, drugging, blackmail, rape, trafficking and forced religious conversion of first-year women students. Three FIRs were registered within a week.

Sewa Nyaya Utthan’s response was to take prevention directly into educational institutions.

The program began in Bhopal in August 2025 and has since reached more than 10,000 students and faculty across 200+ campuses through workshops and sensitisation sessions.

The program has also resulted in students coming forward with complaints of sexual exploitation and blackmail. Our team has assisted such students in approaching the authorities and filing complaints and FIRs.

Within 90 days of its commencement in Bhopal, the program received formal support from the Madhya Pradesh Higher Education Department, which directed government, aided and private colleges and universities in Bhopal district to cooperate with its implementation.

The program is now in its second year in Bhopal.

Taking the Bhopal Success to Meerut

The Meerut program carries forward the prevention- and awareness-focused approach developed through the Bhopal experience.

Through practical examples, reflective discussions and interactive engagement, students are taught to recognise how grooming and manipulation can develop through seemingly ordinary interactions and escalate into coercion, blackmail, sexual exploitation or violence.

A particular focus is placed on helping students understand how communal identity can become a factor in gender-based exploitation, and why young people must be alert to attempts to manipulate, isolate or exploit them on the basis of their vulnerability or identity.

Why Prevention Matters

Sewa Nyaya’s work in Bhopal demonstrated the importance of reaching students before a crisis occurs.

Grooming can begin by deliberately building trust.

Private conversations, photographs and personal information can subsequently become tools of blackmail.

Manipulation can gradually become coercion.

Communal or gender-based targeting can remain unnoticed until a victim is already deeply entangled in an exploitative situation.

The objective of the programme is therefore to equip students to recognise these patterns early, understand their rights and responsibilities, identify warning signs and seek help before exploitation escalates.

Expanding the Program

The Bhopal program, now entering its second year, is supported by the Hindu Network Foundation. The expansion to Meerut has been undertaken with the support of Dharmansh Foundation.

Sewa Nyaya plans to continue taking this prevention-focused campus education to more cities and institutions, building on the experience and institutional framework developed through its work in Bhopal.