Women and girls are accustomed to having their movements restricted in the name of safety. If they venture out alone and face violence, society often turns the accusatory lens on them to police their behaviour, rather than the perpetrator. Taking a male relative or friend along is thought to protect them. Yet, recent incidents in a New Delhi park and two Bihar districts have shown that even such a safeguard can be meaningless. On the contrary, the presence of a boy with a young girl is easily weaponised against her on the euphemism of ‘moral policing’. In reality, this behaviour that is often exercised by men—and validated by other men—is another way in which patriarchal values are reinforced by clamping down on women’s rights and freedoms.
In the Delhi case, three men are accused of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl, who was accompanied by a male friend, by posing as police personnel. In Bihar’s Jamui, the violence that a girl and her teenage classmates faced after sundown was filmed. Just days later, another video from Samastipur was shared in which a group rounds up on a young couple in broad daylight.
Following these incidents, women students of the renowned Lady Shri Ram College in Delhi, that is located near the park, raised concerns for their own safety. Meanwhile, Bihar police initiated action to take down videos of the underage girls’ molestation from social media accounts.
Three aspects deserve particular attention. First, almost 14 years after the Delhi rape protests, it is unconscionable that public spaces in the capital and elsewhere remain utterly unsafe for women. The ‘smartness’ of India’s cities is meaningless if they cannot, at the very least, be well-lit and adequately policed. Second, filming of sexual violence by perpetrators has become a dangerous norm. In such cases, the police must also invoke the relevant laws to crack down on the additional digital violence that re-victimises the survivor for as long as the material is online. Policymakers must also examine if the existing laws suffice to target the evolving methods of sexual violence in the digital sphere, especially if visuals are shared in the seedier sections of mainstream platforms for profit. Third, as experts and this publication continue to contend, it is the certainty of punishment that reduces crime, not the severity.