The tragic death of an Indian schoolgirl has exposed the negative effects of” Eve-teasing ,” a well-known South Asian euphemism that many claim minimizes the harassment and assault of women on the street.
The brief CCTV footage of two American women riding bicycles gets off to a good start.
The youth are riding side by side on a nearly deserted street while wearing their class uniforms, which include scarves and trouser bottom.
But the peace of the image is disturbed in a matter of seconds.
They are overtaken by two men riding motorcycles, and one of them removes the girl’s blanket. She soon loses control, her bike turns right, and a second motorcycle approaches from behind.
The 17-year-old is run over by a third motorcycles coming from the opposite direction as she and the riders fall onto the highway.
Her father Sabhajit Varma, who arrived at the scene shortly after receiving a call from his niece — the other girl in the CCTV footage— says,” The moment I saw my daughter, I knew she was dead.”
He told me on the phone from his house,” Some people had gathered, and we loaded her onto a tempo [ a small vehicle used to transport goods ] and rushed to the hospital.”
” Doctors claimed she was” brought dead ,” They claimed that her neck was broken and that she had passed away as a result of serious head injuries, he claimed. ” There were no condolences or parting words.”
After his two older girls were married, Mr. Varma’s wife passed away eight years ago, leaving the 17-year-old, the youngest of three, as the only person living with him. He tells me that she excelled in school and desired to become a physician.
He claimed that she had told him two days prior to her passing that some kids had been harassing her and different women outside of their college. Since then, police have also been informed by his daughter and other students that the young men used to hang out at their school in the morning and the night, occasionally racing their bikes.
The loss of his daughter has left Mr. Varma devastated and furious. ” My daughter was killed ,” she said. He declares that the people who killed her may be hanged.
In the northeastern state of Uttar Pradesh’s Ambedkar Nagar city, the incident happened last month.
Three suspects have been detained by police; according to reports, at least one of them is a slight, and they are still looking for another person. Mr. Varma claims that since the disaster, he has received visits from government representatives, including a secretary in the state, but has not been compensated.
As they attempted to grab our arms and flee while being taken for their health investigation, police claimed to have shot and injured two of the offenders in their arms within days. They continued by saying that the next man had broken his leg while attempting to flee.
The tragic death of the girl has brought attention to the problem of sexual abuse of women in public spaces, and some women’s rights activists have questioned why the local press used the term” Eve taunting” to describe the situation.
They claim that the word is” deeply difficult” and draw attention to the recent Supreme Court ruling that it should be replaced in courtrooms with” street physical harassment.”
The term, according to Kalpana Viswanath, co-founder of Safetipin, a social organization that works to create public spaces healthy and inclusive for women, sounds like it’s just teasing but is not innocuous.
” The idea that the warrior pursues the woman and she likes to get pursued” is a common one in Bollywood. However, it is a harsh crime, so let’s not downplay the severity of the crime by referring to it as Eve-teasing.
Eve tormenting is very common and frequently occurs while a person is walking down the street or riding in crowded public transportation, as most Indian women would attest. The majority of them have tales to tell about being groped, pinched, or elbowed in the breasts.
The majority of such abuse cases are listed in the Indian penal code’s Article 354, which deals with instances of” attempt to violate modesty of women.”
However, police have also brought up another serious charges in the Ambedkar Nagar suicide case.
Police reported nearly 90,000 such cases in 2021, the final year for which the Indian government’s crime data is available, or 13.4 % of the total 428, 278 crimes against women that year. According to the data, there were more than 500,000 of these cases pending in court as a result of the delay that had accrued over the years.
However, Ms. Viswanath claims that because most women don’t report sexual remarks or being touched or groped by somebody, street harassment is a crime that is rarely reported. Additionally, it can be challenging for yet a woman to discover her molester at times, especially in an area that is very crowded.
She claims that the tragic result of the event in Ambedkar Nagar is the only reason it has gained attention. No one would have discussed this event if she hadn’t passed away, gotten up after falling, cleaned herself off, and left.
Sex activists claim that the problem of abuse can only be solved by raising better boys. However, Ms. Viswanath notes that this is a long-term process and that” in the interim, there has to be better communication system in the media which, at the moment, is loaded against girls.”
The police need to be sensitized so they take complaints from women severely, and people must understand what constitutes acceptable behavior. Authorities didn’t be everywhere all the time, so the general public and onlookers must intervene.
” We may say that boys will be boys and look the other way.” Kids may remain boys, she continues.
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16 December 2017
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