What happened in Guwahati?

[Nothing in this post should be construed to mean that I have the slightest sympathy for people who gang up to harass, abuse, hurt and humiliate the weak – by which I mean not only young girls but children, old people of both sexes, the disabled, the ill and even the lone man against the mob… we too easily forget that young girls are not the only victims of abuse! A lot of people of the type who are now up in arms in defence of this girl find it quite right and enjoyable to beat a petty thief to death or close if he is unlucky enough to get caught: I have seen this again and again with my own eyes]

The more I read up on the net (click here and here) about what happened that night in Guwahati, the more I smell something very, very fishy.

For one thing, the so-called video looks much less like a genuine molestation scene than a grotesque pantomime in slow motion: in this age of the uncouth and the absurd, courtesy kinky cinema and mindless ad flicks, surely most sane readers will agree that much weirder things can be ‘arranged’? This suspicion grows strong when one sees how quickly politicians have got into the mutual mudslinging act, how the police still haven’t picked up the main accused, and how the National Commission for Women seems at a loss about what to do (this evening I heard it has recommended that the government ‘rehabilitate’ the girl with a job. For god’s sake!)

Secondly, molesters rarely allow themselves and their dastardly act to be filmed for the record at length – unless the whole thing is premeditated for a purpose (Amitabh Bachchan has asked in his blog how a TV crew was so promptly on the spot). I have been on the news beat (real news, not covering models doing the catwalk or launching new brands of shampoo), and I know that the far commoner reaction is to take away the camera and beat up the man behind it.

Thirdly, ‘assaulted and molested for half an hour before she was rescued by some passers-by’? How could a girl be assaulted and molested in public for half an hour? And who were these ‘passers-by’ who then rescued her? Were they a bigger mob, or armed policemen, or a few braveheart do-gooders? What took them so long, and how did they persuade the ‘molesters’ to let the girl go?

Fourthly, some reports say the girl was a minor: so what was she doing in a pub? Why did they throw her out only when she couldn’t pay? It even seems she had been brawling drunkenly on the street with some of her friends, and it is some of these ‘friends’ who then turned on her (some are even saying that one of these friends was the reporter who told the cameraman to start shooting; the fellow has resigned from his job even before formal charges have been brought against him!). What kind of people did she choose as friends? Everybody is screaming about her rights and how they have been violated – what about some talk of responsibility? What kind of responsibility did this girl take for her own safety? What kind of parents let their 17-year old kid out for a night on the tiles? Why don’t people who want that kind of ‘fun’ – no matter whether they are young or old – calmly accept the fact that it goes with certain kinds of risks? Nobody accuses ‘society’ of neglect or abuse when a bungee-jumper dies because the rope broke!

And finally, all this talk about how journalists were involved, and what they should and shouldn’t have done fills me with deep disgust. Any honest reporter admits in private that ninety per cent of what they are accused of is true: they are only concerned with finding or actually creating sensation, because that alone sells, and that alone is what ultimately matters. In the newsroom we talked about posto – slang (in those days, I don’t know what it is now) for concocted or grossly embellished news, and how most of our pages were routinely filled with such stuff.  I shall narrate just two fairly recent incidents here, both in Durgapur. But let’s keep that for the next post… 

So what am I missing here? Those who have been following the unfolding story more closely, would they care to enlighten me? Catcalls, wolf-whistles, lewd remarks, surreptitious groping in buses, yes (disgusting as all that is), but girls are not as a rule suddenly molested on city streets by gangs, else all the hundreds of girls who have been coming alone to my classes for years would have stopped coming long ago. Why did this happen? And what really happened?