Five women students, who sought accommodation for a night at the Kerala government’s Ente Koodu shelter in Thiruvananthapuram, had a trying time. For nearly two hours, they ended up talking to the reception in-charge in vain, for she would not allow them in. Neither did the police to whom they turned make things easy for them.
The reason – they had come after watching a film, and that showed they had ‘bad character’.
The incident came to light when one of the students wrote a Facebook post about it on a group for the city. She also spoke to TNM about the incident. “It happened in the beginning of May,” she says, sounding unsure of talking about the incident three weeks later. The issue has been taken up with the Social Justice Department and the students have been assured that it will not happen again, not to them or any other woman seeking shelter. But if it would help spread awareness in any way, if it would help the police and other responsible authorities be more sensitive towards women seen outside in the night, she is more than willing to narrate it again, she adds.
The incident
All five women are students of the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER) and wanted to board a train at 6 am. Ente Koodu, a night shelter for women started by the Kerala government’s Social Justice Department six months ago, is opposite the Thiruvananthapuram Central Railway Station. The students thought it’d be safe to spend the night there and catch their train in the morning. The shelter is in the same building as the KSRTC bus terminal, on the eighth floor. The students who reached the terminal from Vithura (where IISER is located) at 9.30 pm, decided to watch a film at a theatre located in the same building, five floors below – the newly started Lenin Cinemas.
“We had seen the notice that the shelter would allow women in till 3 am. So we thought we could go after the movie,” the student says. Ironically enough, the movie they watched was Uyare, a film that speaks of a woman’s achievement despite the hardships she faced, a film that’s been appreciated by the Social Justice Minister KK Shailaja.
Once the movie got over and the students went up seeking shelter, the woman in charge refused to let them in. Her reason was that they came after watching a movie, and there were previous instances of young women coming to stay there after telling lies at the hostels they stayed in. She asked them to get permission from the policemen at the police aid post. The five women came back with permission, with the policemen saying they could enter if they had their ID cards. But the in-charge was not satisfied. She wanted them to bring a written permission or else the policemen themselves.
“So we went all the way back again and brought the policemen with us. They were at first annoyed that they had to come up every time a woman wanted admission at the shelter. But on reaching there, the woman in-charge told them that the Sub Inspector and the head of the institution had asked her to deny entry of girls who came late (after 8 pm) from hostels. The policemen changed their attitude then and said they can’t do anything and whatever the woman said was the rule. They suggested we wait at the KSRTC bus stand below, adding that there were other women there," she says.
In the middle of all this, a call was made to the warden of the hostel where the students stayed. The students had already stated they had permission from the warden and their parents. “When the warden said this was true, it was proved we were speaking the truth and yet they wouldn’t budge," she says.
The SI enters
The students insisted that they call the SI. They were sure the SI would come to their aid. “But the biggest disappointment was his response. He too seemed prejudiced against any woman who was seen outside in the night. He told us this was not a shelter for women who roamed about and then came in the night. He then called our warden again to confirm our story," she says.
This call was made well past two in the night. The student who spoke to us points out how scary it would be if parents or guardians got such calls in the middle of the night. “He just began the call saying he is the Thampanoor SI and asked if five students from the hostel had taken permission to go out. Imagine such a call coming to your parent at this hour, saying their daughter has been found like this. It would create such a scare. Even for us, we could face all of this because there were five of us. What if it was one woman who was seeking shelter?”
The student wonders why it was important for the reception in-charge and the police to know the ‘character’ of the women seeking shelter. “It is supposed to be a safe shelter. Whichever women come there seeking shelter, it is because they feel staying outside at that hour and location is not safe. Why would it matter even if it is a woman with a ‘bad’ character?”
Social Justice Department’s response
She asks these and other questions to the Social Justice Department to which all five students have written a detailed complaint, narrating the whole episode. “They got back saying they would give instructions on how to treat the women who come there and assured us it would not happen again to anyone. The enquiry has been closed too.”
The only request the students made is to include policemen too in whatever awareness programmes the department was planning to do. That, the student we spoke to repeats, has been the biggest disappointment of all.
“It might be expected of a woman put in-charge of the shelter. She might not have enough exposure. But you don’t expect that of an SI, who is supposed to take care of the whole city. What if a woman ran to him for help in the middle of the night? Would he try to save her or question her on what she was doing there? How can people be so prejudiced just because we were out in the night?” the student keeps asking, not able to find an answer.
After the nearly two hours of grilling, the students were finally given permission to use the shelter but not before giving their addresses and phone numbers. “Like we were some kind of criminals. Two of us stayed there. Three of us went and waited at the railway station. After all the humiliation we’d been put through, we just didn’t have the heart to stay there anymore.”