Kozhikode: Women participants at the Kiss on the Street protest in Kozhikode were subjected to verbal sexual harassment by the city police. From the moment of arrest to the moment of release, these participants had to take the verbal as well as physical assault of the cops.
The participants told DC that they felt violated and mentally harassed when the police accused them of being morally loose and asked them to “do such vulgar things after taking a hotel room”.
Resmi R Nair, one of the participants who got arrested, told DC that the women cops first dragged them and pulled down their dhuppattahs for the entire male crowd to have a better view. “They even tore our churidars and let a set of voyeuristic men to grope us in full public view. While taking us to the police station, the police jeep driver, a man, was passing lewd comments and told us that we should be lashed. After reaching the women’s police station, the cops started a moral tirade against us and called all of us morally loose characters. They asked us whether our husbands knew what we had been doing and whether we were not ashamed to do it on the road. It was nothing but character assassination,” Resmi R Nair told DC.
Divya D V, another participant, said that the women cops were engaged in moral policing and termed them as orphans with no responsibilities. “They asked us why could not we wear proper dresses and whom we had brought along for kissing. They said they had also done all this but not in public and asked us why they were doing something meant to be done only in night,” Divya said.
