7 brave girls in Patna: but are we listening?
Patna: Seven college girls from Aliganj village under Suryapura police station decided enough is enough and recently approached the state’s director-general of police Abhayanand for justice, with some help from the National Commission for Women member Charu Khanna. It turns out that this is not a case of one-off incident but a continued harassment for the past five years from a local hoodlum called Manish Kumar and his associates who had targeted all the young girls in their village.
Five years is a long time in a girl’s life as she grows into a fully grown woman. It clearly means the girl’s younger days have turned into a hell rather than a time for fun and celebration associated with youth. The girls said that the miscreants not only passed lewd comments at them, but also distributed their vulgar pictures, which were morphed. The girls alleged that they were also warned of an acid attack if they did not obey their orders.
‘We have lodged several complaints with the local police in the past five years but nothing has happened so far,’ one of the girls, said. ‘The police just ignored our complaints.’ The girls, who happen to be students of Nagendra Mahila College, Badri Narain College and A.S. college in Rohtas, said that they had even stopped going to the college because of the constant fear of the goons.
‘Three of the girls from our village even tried to commit suicide because of the continuous harassment,’ they said. ‘They have also tried to drag us from our homes,” they added.
Alarmed at the incident, the DGP ordered the district superintendent of police Manu Maharaj to visit their village and inquire into the incident. He also asked the inspector-general (weaker sections) Arvind Pandey to record the victims’ statements and lodge separate FIRs against the accused.
He said that the police would invoke the Crime Control Act (CCA) in the case. The district police officials said that they had received two complaints about the accused in the past and had also arrested them but they were later released on bail. The girls said they had written about their harassment to the women’s commission and had come to meet its member Charu Khanna who was on a visit to Patna.
Khanna, who took them to meet the DGP, said that the girls from Rohtas district must get justice. She said that she was surprised to know that Bihar state women’s commission members were not aware about the case even though two of them belonged to Rohtas district. She said that the local police seemed to be protecting the accused. ‘The girls had written to the NCW after they failed to get justice here,’ she added.