Fighting eve-teasing: rights and remedy Irrespective of the dress they wear, or, their ages, their looks, their educational, professional and marital status, never mind the time or place, women in Kolkata and elsewhere are being subjected to all kinds of harassment, including eve-teasing. Shoma Chatterji peels the layers and exposes myths.
• september 2007 - Eve teasing violates a woman's basic right to live in dignity. Will women forever remain targets and victims of eve teasing? Will their rescuers continue to be unwilling martyrs to a dead cause? Before these questions are addressed, one needs to explore and analyse why, irrespective of the dress they wear, or, their ages, their looks, their educational, professional and marital status, never mind the time or place, women in Kolkata and elsewhere are being subjected to all kinds of harassment from obscene telephone calls, stalking, and last but not the least – eve-teasing.
On August 1, Sanjay Soni, a young man, tried to molest a girl inside a shared auto rickshaw in Lake Town in the presence of her father who was escorting her. When the girl tried to resist, the father asked the auto rickshaw driver to stop and began to bash up the culprit. A crowd gathered and beat up the man who was saved from being lynched by the timely arrival of the police. Some of the women who were standing in the queue at the Lake Town auto rickshaw stand said eve teasing and molestation are regular occurrences on the route.
On July 30 this year, Tabassum (name changed), a student of Class VII, studying in Cartauche Public School in Park Circus, was returning home in a bus on route 45. Unable to bear with the advances of a middle-aged man standing behind her in the crowded bus, she raised an alarm. Her co-passengers remained mute spectators. The bus driver stopped the bus when he saw an on-duty sergeant. Some bus passengers came forward to back Tabassum only when the police began to question her. Singh was later released because the girl and her parents withdrew their complaint. Almost all Kolkata newspapers reported both these incidents.
The law on eve-teasing
In the Indian Penal Code, the word ‘eve-teasing’ does not exist. Eve teasing is an attitude, a mindset, a set of behaviours that is construed as an insult and an act of humiliation of the female sex.
However, victims of eve teasing could take recourse to certain sections of the IPC. Section 298 (A) and (B) of the Indian Penal Code sentences a man found guilty of making a girl or woman the target of obscene gestures, remarks, songs or recitation for a maximum tenure of three months.
Section 292 of the IPC clearly spells out that showing pornographic or obscene pictures, books or slips to a woman or girl draws a fine of Rs.2000 with two years of rigorous imprisonment for first offenders. In case of repeated offence, when and if proved, the offender will be slapped with a fine of Rs.5000 with five years imprisonment.
Under Section 509 of the IPC, obscene gestures, indecent body language and acidic comments directed at any woman or girl carries a penalty of rigorous imprisonment for one year or a fine or both.
• In 2005, Chandrima Dutta was waiting at the bus stop at Minto Park. She had to go to Dhakuria. As she waited, a whisper in her ear asked, "Want a lift?" Two twenty-year-old boys were the source of the whisper. Thirty-year-old Chandrima moved away towards the street. But they would not let her be. They started the bike they were riding. One of them pulled at her hand while the other slipped a hand around her waist. As she began screaming, the boys speeded away in their two-wheeler. The time was six in the evening. A sub-inspector at the Shakespeare Sarani Police Station (near Minto Park) narrated this to me.
Sometime in 2005, Reema Bose (name changed), was returning from the hospital at the end of the day from Deshpriya Park. As she walked along Motilal Nehru Road, an auto rickshaw suddenly appeared by her side. A few young men inside were guzzling beer. They began to throw bargains, whistled, teased and threw obscene comments at her. When nothing seemed to work, one of them got off the rick and tried to pull her into the vehicle. A mobile police van arrived in the nick of time and saved Reema. It was eight in the evening. (Reema narrated this incident to me.)
Kolkata is not unique. Women in Bangalore constantly face leers from passers-by, and taxi and rickshaw drivers. In buses, groping is common and on one occasion, when a woman yelled at the person touching her, she was thrown off the bus! The Mehrauli-Gurgaon road in Delhi has a lot of liquor shops and often, men get back into their cars and begin to drink after which eve-teasing is a nice and easy way to have fun and go on an ego trip at one and the same time.
Women's rights activist Maitreyee Chatterjee says that even a burqah cannot guarantee safety. "Section 354 of the Indian Penal Code which mentions the arrest of a culprit for attempt to outrage the modesty of women does not have any condition about the victim's dress," she says. Filmmaker Anindita Sarbadhicari says that eve teasing and molestation are acts of perversion. "It is foolish to think that molesters get turned on by the victim's dress. Then why are there so many rapes in Islamic countries?" asks Sarbadhicari.
Remedies?
Women constables in Calcutta's Salt Lake area sometimes function as undercover agents from the Bidhan Nagar (north) police station by acting as decoys. Three young woman constables were able to round up a total of 60 offenders within the first month of their operation in 2005. All offenders, say the policewomen, were aged between 18 and 28. This strategy was probably the outcome of the sudden spate of obscene calls hounding wives of high officials and ministers who live in Salt Lake, Calcutta. Film personalities like Moonmoon Sen, Indrani Haldar and Indrani Dutta, Dolly Roy, wife of Congress MLA Sougata Roy, Renuka Biswas, wife of CBI joint director Upen Biswas, Deepika Nanda, wife of state fisheries minister Kiranmoy Nanda are among those who were hounded by obscene calls at any time of day or night. But immediate deterrent action is often linked if the victim is a celebrity or has high connections. Democracy here is conspicuous by its absence.
An officer posted at Bidhan Nagar police station, Kolkata, thinks that laws against eve teasing are not stringent. "There is no law that can bring them to task," he says. "They are penalized with a meagre fine ranging from Rs.10 to Rs.100.00 or three days imprisonment in lieu of the fine. Until proper and more stringent punishment is meted out, one cannot stop this," he adds. To nab the teaser and hold him down is one of the most difficult tasks in law. Add to this the casual and indifferent attitude of the constable you take your complaint to. He looks at you with a smirk, chews on his paan and the look is enough to express that he does not believe a word of what you have said or better still, does not care!
