The ugly face of 'Eve-teasing'

The tragic death of an Indian schoolgirl has laid bare the consequences of "Eve-teasing" - a popular South Asian euphemism which many say trivialises the street harassment and assault of women.

The short CCTV video of two Indian girls riding bicycles starts off quite innocuously, BBC reports.

Dressed in their school uniform - tunics, salwar bottoms and scarves - the teenagers are riding side by side on a near-empty road. But within seconds, the calm of the scene is shattered.

Two men on a motorbike overtake them and one of them pulls away the scarf of one of the girls. Immediately she loses her balance and her cycle moves right and collides with a second motorbike coming from behind.

As she and the riders fall on the road, the 17-year-old is run over by a third motorbike coming from the opposite direction.

"The moment I saw my daughter, I knew she was dead," says her father Sabhajit Varma, who arrived at the scene within minutes after receiving a call from his niece - the other girl in the CCTV footage.

"Some people had gathered and we loaded her onto a tempo [a small vehicle used to transport goods] and rushed to a hospital," he told me on the phone from his home.

"Doctors said she was 'brought dead'. They said her jaw was shattered and she had died from severe injuries to her head," he said. "There were no last words, no goodbyes."

Varma's wife died eight years ago and after his two older daughters were married, the 17-year-old, the youngest of three, was the only one living with him. She was good at studies and wanted to be a doctor, he tells me.

Two days before her death, he said, she'd told him that some boys had been harassing her and other girls outside their school. Since then, his niece and other students have also told police that the young men used to hover around their school morning and evening, sometimes racing their bikes.

His daughter's death has left Varma heartbroken and angry. "My daughter was murdered. The men who killed her must be hanged," he says.

The incident took place last month in Ambedkar Nagar district of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

Police have arrested three suspects - reports say at least one of them is a minor - and are looking for a fourth man. Since the tragedy, Varma says, he's been visited by government officials, including a minister in the state, but not received any compensation.

After the footage of the incident went viral on social media and made headline news, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath warned those who harassed women on the streets that "Yamraj [the Hindu god of death] would be waiting for them at the next traffic crossing".

And within hours, police said they had shot and injured two of the suspects in their legs "as they tried to snatch our weapons and run away while being taken for their medical examination". The third man, they added, had fractured his leg trying to run.

The families of those arrested have denied that their sons were involved in the crime - they insist that their boys are not those seen in the viral CCTV footage and accuse the police of shooting and injuring them in staged encounters. Police, however, say they have fast-tracked the case and expect a judgement in a month.

The tragic death of the schoolgirl has put the spotlight on the issue of sexual harassment of women in public places - with some women's rights activists also questioning the use of the phrase "Eve teasing" by the local press to describe the case.

The term, they say, is "deeply problematic" and point out that recently, the Supreme Court also flagged it, saying it should be replaced with "street sexual harassment" in courts.

Kalpana Viswanath, co-founder of Safetipin, a social organisation working to make public spaces safe and inclusive for women, says the term makes it sound like it's just a bit of teasing, but it's not benign.

"It's a typical Bollywood trope that the hero pursues the woman and she likes to be pursued. But it's a criminal offence, it's violent, and let's not minimise the harm of violence by calling it Eve-teasing, let's no trivialise it" she says.

As most Indian women would testify, Eve teasing is very common and happens often while a woman is walking on the road or travelling in crowded public transport - most would have a story or two to tell about when they were groped or pinched or elbowed in the chest.

Most cases of such harassment are registered under Article 354 of the Indian penal code which deals with cases of "attempt to outrage modesty of women".

But in the Ambedkar Nagar death case, police have invoked other stringent charges as well.

In 2021, the last year for which the Indian government's crime data is available, police recorded almost 90,000 such cases - or 13.4 per cent of the total 4,28,278 crimes against women that year. With the backlog built up over the years, more than half a million such cases were pending in courts, according to the data.

But street harassment is a highly under-reported crime because most women don't go to the police when someone touches or gropes them or passes lewd remarks, Viswanath says. Also, sometimes, especially in a very crowded area, it may be difficult even for a woman to identify her molester.

The incident in Ambedkar Nagar, she says, has made news only because of the tragic outcome. "If she hadn't died, if she got up after falling down, dusted herself off and walked away, no-one would have talked about this incident."

The issue of harassment, gender activists say, can only be addressed by bringing up better boys. But, Viswanath says, that's a long-term process and "in the meantime, there has to be a better messaging system in the media which, at the moment, is laden against girls".

"People need to understand what's acceptable behaviour, the police have to be sensitised so they take complaints from women seriously. And since police can't be everywhere all the time, the public and bystanders have to step in.

"We cannot look the other way and say boys will be boys. We cannot allow boys to be boys," she adds.

/KN/