
BENGALURU: A 50-year-old woman, a grandmother who works as a maid in an apartment in Rajiv Gandhi Nagar in Kodigehalli, was groped when she was heading out at 5.45 am Tuesday.
The perpetrator fled the spot after she raised an alarm. Sexual harassment is a regular experience for women of all ages in this area, and they dread stepping out in the mornings and nights, say residents.
Men flashing on railway tracks which women use to cross over from Railway Parallel Road to 12th Main Road is just one example. “Most of the women work as maids or cooks in the four apartment blocks in the area, and have to report for duty at odd morning hours. They leave late in the evenings,” said a resident.
Having come to Bengaluru from Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal, they have little support in the city, and refrain from approaching local police stations too, she said.
They share their experiences with their employers but are unwilling to pursue the matter legally.
The harassment has become frequent now, with two new bars opening up on Railway Parallel Road, said a resident. “It was only one bar earlier. Drunkards and drug addicts prowl the area,” she said.
Earlier this week, two teenage girls from a posh apartment were touched inappropriately by a harasser on a two-wheeler, which then raced away. “The girls have not even told their parents as they fear they will not be permitted to step outside their homes in future,” she said.
Young men performing wheelies often try to snatch mobiles from young girls. “If the women resist, they slap them on their back or grope them and speed away,” said an employee at one of the apartments. “I have chased these boys sometimes on my scooty but they ride at great speed and escape. Molesting women and getting away with it gives them some kind of thrill,” he added. “They also do stunts with wheelies creating much noise and it alarms the elderly walking around,” he said.
After the incident involving the elderly woman on Tuesday (January 21), a group of residents visited the Kodigehalli police station to brief them about the situation on Wednesday. “A hoysala visited the area late at night and five rounds of patrolling was done by the cops on the 12th Main Road and surrounding areas,” said an apartment resident.
An apartment owner confided what her maids had told her, “Men sometimes stand nude on the tracks. What can they do but bend their heads and cross.”
MLA Krishna Byre Gowda had visited the area a few months ago and assured residents that CCTV cameras would be installed for overall safety, but it never happened. TNIE’s repeated attempts to contact him via call and message went in vain.