Raising the question of women’s safety on Hyderabad’s roads, videos recorded by a woman showed her and a relative being followed, harassed and abused on busy roads in broad daylight by two men on a motorbike.
The Mailardevpally police booked a case and detained three persons on Tuesday for harassing and stalking the two women.
According to the police, the two women were travelling from Mailardevpally to Abids to go shopping, when two men began following their auto rickshaw on a motorbike.
One video of the incident shows them riding their bikes besides the auto, while leering at and harassing the women.
The accused later stopped the auto, and began arguing with the two women, hurling abuses at them. They were joined by two other men who also abused the women.
At one point, one of the men even climbs into the front of the auto, as the women yell at him to leave.
Speaking to CNN-News18, the girl's uncle said, “As soon as she left the house for shopping, two men started following her. They forcefully stopped the vehicle in a deserted area and harassed her. Where are the SHE teams and where are the police?”
With the men abusing them and refusing to leave them alone, the women reportedly got out of the auto and began to argue with the men drawing public attention. As people begin to gather, the men finally left them alone and slunk away.
“When the auto driver came to their rescue, they threatened him. However, as the locals started gathering, the suspects ran away in fear that they would be beaten up,” a police official was quoted as saying.
Following the incident, the women filed a complaint on Tuesday morning at the Mailardevpally police station.
The police has registered a case under Section 354 D (Stalking), 341 (Wrongful Restraint) and 506 (Criminal intimidation) of the IPC, and an investigation is underway.