Bengaluru: A woman constable on duty to monitor the protests that erupted after the Frazer Town and Vibgyor High rapes, was reportedly herself shockingly subjected to sexual harassment soon afterwards.
The constable, who doesn’t want to be named, claims that a senior male officer of the rank of assistant sub-inspector, who had extended her shift hours, offered to drop her home and on the way played vulgar songs on his mobile phone and made advances to her.
What is more, she, like many other women police, has chosen to ignore the incident. Shockingly, sexual harassment, it appears, is common even among the police force which is supposed to protect women in public from it. A number of women police officers say they don’t feel safe working in the department.
Many have at least one instance of harassment to recount, such as as a ‘spank’ on their backs or a ‘strange rub’ on their hands, shoulders or thighs by their male seniors. According to them, the officers would later look them in the eye to assess their reaction and if they did not show any, they would take it as a sign of submission and upgrade their advances the next time.
But should a woman subordinate expresses disgust, her life would change for the worse, they say. “A colleague of mine told me that a senior officer put his hand on her thighs and started rubbing it while she was in a meeting with him and other officers. She did not know how to react but when she later expressed her revulsion to the senior, she was soon transferred to North Karnataka,” says one woman officer on condition of anonymity.
“The offenders and victims of sexual harassment are seniors and juniors respectively of the same police department which enforces the law,” rues another elderly woman officer, who is close to retirement.
The fact that these complaints are coming from serving women police officers in the city police, which is supposed to be working to curb crimes against women, raises the pertinent question: Who will police the policemen?
