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Two women were harassed by an unidentified man in Bengaluru’s Cooke Town on Friday evening, June 6, in a disturbing chain of events that left one of them injured. The attacks happened near Basha Stores and Milton Street Park around 7 PM, leaving the survivors traumatised. This has sparked fear and outrage among residents after word spread that bystanders had refused to intervene and the police delayed registering a complaint.
The assailant first approached a 28-year-old woman (identity withheld) near Basha departmental stores. She had stepped out to buy food. He forcibly kissed her on the lips- so violently that it left her injured. Minutes later, the same man entered Milton Street Park, just 52 meters away, and targeted a second woman, a 42-year-old woman who was walking with her child and a friend. TNM spoke to this woman.
“He stopped and stared at us. I sensed something was wrong and moved behind a tree trunk, but he followed us,” she told TNM. “He came running towards me with his arms stretched, saying, ‘Come hug me, I am single.’ He was tall and hefty. I screamed and ran towards where people were sitting.”
But none of the bystanders helped.
“When I told them what had happened, they told me not to worry, that he may be mentally unstable. I said being unstable doesn’t justify assault. My daughter heard everything and kept saying that she wants to go home”.
The accused walked away casually, threatening, “Go file an FIR, I am not scared.”
Afraid the man might follow her and attack again, the woman called her husband, who rushed to the park to escort her and her child home. “My husband dialed 112 immediately,” she said.
Although the police arrived soon after, they initially refused to enter the park. When they eventually did, they began profiling the attacker, instead of focusing on the survivors’ safety.
“They asked, ‘Was he Muslim?’, ‘Was he Indian?’, "Probably a Christian because he said ‘hang me like Jesus,” the woman recounted. “It was disturbing. Instead of looking for him or checking if we were okay, they were trying to profile him. What does that have to do with anything?”
“They (police) only seemed to take us seriously after learning about the first victim near Basha Stores,” she said.
At the police station, the survivors encountered further hurdles. “There were no women officers. The male officers kept asking us what we wanted them to do. Filing the FIR took hours." They were asked to return to the station only on Monday, as the police were busy with Eid bandobast (security arrangements).
A case was finally registered at Pulakeshinagar police station under sections Sections 74 (assault or use of criminal force on a woman) and 75 (sexual harassment) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhitha.
Farah, a resident of Cooke Town, said the assaults left the neighbourhood shaken. “This happened to a woman who was out for a walk. It happened to a young girl who had just stepped out to buy momos. And in a park where children were still playing,” she said. “The daughter who was walking along with the victim has now asked her, ‘What should I do if this happens to me?’”
Farah added that the community was angry not just at the attacker, but at bystanders who didn’t help the women in distress and the police who reduced the incidents to mere paperwork.
