A bus stop bench, which was reduced to three separate seats as an alleged moral policing measure to prevent girls and boys from sitting tog-ether, prompted students from a nearby engineering college to sit on each other’s laps. The city mayor on Thursday promised a modern gender-neutral waiting facility there.

Trivandrum Mayor Arya S Rajendran visited the area on Thursday after the photos posted on social media by the students of College of Engineering Trivandrum went viral. In a Facebook post, she said the manner in which the bench was cut into three seats was not only “inappropriate”, but also “unbecoming of a progressive society” like that of Kerala.