Not easy for women in a Police Station

If educated women or those from influential families find it difficult to engage with the police, what can poor women in the margins do? Sumiran Preet Kaur Delhi

It's almost impossible for educated or professional women in Delhi to go to a police station, especially in the night. The affluent society women might never have visited a police station in their lifetime, unless it's a case like Jessica Lal, when socialites and fashionistas were made to answer questions. Even in daytime it is plain difficult for ordinary Indian women from the margins, or who don't have any influence whatsoever, to enter police stations. This is not a general rule but a repetitive narrative.

And if this is the scenario in Delhi, it's like a nightmare in mofussil townships and interior villages. Witness for instance the police stations in western UP, Omkara territory, where between crime and law and order, the lines are so terribily blurred. Tribals and Dalits, especially women, are routinely refused entry in police stations. In a classically perverse sense, it is often the typical scenario shown in old parallel cinema like Aakrosh - check out innumerable stories of women assaulted, degraded and humiliated in Indian villages, or where movements against displacement are consolidating like in Lalgarh, Kalinganagar, Kashipur or Dantewada, or close to the capital in the caste khaps of Haryana and western UP, in the lynching and public spectacles of torture and death sentences given to women in the form of honour killings.

Rashi Mehra works with Sweccha, an NGO. She was the president of the Gargi College Students' Union in Delhi University, when, on September 16, 2007, she saw it point-blank - male, machismo's perversity as a public spectacle. A gang of nearly 300 young men who had come to appear for the 'constable exams' in Delhi Police, went berserk around the north campus of  Delhi University, attacking, abusing and molesting female students.

"I was in the south campus when we heard of this. We spoke to the girls who were molested. Since they were shocked, and shy of approaching the police, we formed a Joint Action Committee Group (JACG). We, a group of girls from Lady Sri Ram, Hindu, St. Stephen's, Kamala Nehru and Gargi College, went to the Maurice Nagar police station, which has north campus under its jurisdiction. But the FIR was not lodged. "We were told that you cannot lodge an FIR as we were not the ones who were molested. Do we have to be raped or molested first to get an FIR lodged for a woman who has been brutally attacked?" questions Rashi Mehra angrily.

"The police categorically told us that since we were not the ones who were molested and  there were too many men it was not possible to recognise and arrest them. We requested them that the FIR can surely be lodged on somebody's behalf, since it happened in a public place. No luck. Next time, when our group went again to the police station, they said, so where all did the guys touch them? It was so embarrassing," she says

Now if the police has behaved like this in the capital of India, where will the other girls go ?"

After two weeks, the JACG met the then Union human resource development minister Arjun Singh. They also approached the National Commission for Women (NCW). Two weeks later, an FIR was lodged. "How come the delayed FIR was lodged this time? The atmosphere in the police station was very intimidating. The police did not seem approachable at all. Even the women constables were of no help. They were rude and asked all sorts of questions which made no sense," says Rashi.