NEW DELHI, 22 December 2005 — Outrage and protests mounted in India yesterday after TV channels showed police officers repeatedly slapping, punching and pulling the hair of young women on a date in a public park in a north Indian city.

Indian media reported one couple was so humiliated by the police action in front of TV crews they have not returned home.

“We are waiting, but my son has not returned. He had gone to drop his girlfriend home,” said Malti Sharma, mother of 20-year old Amit. Amit was one of the victims of Monday’s police action. “The girl was scared to go home. I don’t know where they have gone.”

“Is falling in love wrong? Who gave the police the right to beat and hit people and misbehave in such a manner,” a woman in Meerut city in Uttar Pradesh state told Aaj Tak television news. Since Tuesday, shocked TV viewers in India have been watching images of female officers pummelling and abusing crying young women in Meerut in what the media is calling “moral policing”.

TV footage also showed male policemen with sticks surrounding the scared women and taking them to women officers who beat them. Several of their male companions were beaten also.

The police operation, termed “operation Romeo”, in a popular park in Meerut on Monday was touted by police as a move to prevent sexual harassment of women.

It turned out to be something very different.

In Meerut, students shouting “Down with police dictatorship” have staged demonstrations and burned effigies of police officers.

The outcry, including from women groups, has forced the police to suspend two women officers and probe the incident.

The National Commission for Women said in a statement yesterday that it had asked for a report from the state government within a week about the “police harassment of young people meeting in public parks.”

Ranjan Bajpai, an official of the Women’s Commission said that “no civilized society should allow such type of cultural policing.”

Members of the upper house of India’s Parliament condemned the police action, calling it “sick policing.”

“We had been getting complaints from people that young people indulge in indecent behavior, but some policemen exceeded their limits,” Meerut police superintendent Rajiv Ranjan Verma told AFP.

One witness said police even picked on a married couple. “They started beating a married couple...They were not even ready to listen to what the couple wanted to say. They were just slapping them,” a witness told NDTV television. In parliament MPs demanded action against the police, who were accompanied by TV crews and journalists during the attack.

The incident is a “blot on civilized society,” said ruling Congress party lawmaker Mohsina Kidwai. “If the police were cracking down on men out to sexually harass women, then why were the girls beaten up?” asked Sushma Swaraj of the main opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

One of India’s most conservative states, Uttar Pradesh is also one of the most crime-ridden, known for gangs indulging in murder, extortion and kidnapping. People in Meerut are amazed that police have the time to go after dating couples.

Some defended the right of young people to date in parks.

“Nobody should be allowed to bother them as long as they are not indulging in obscene acts,” local lawmaker S.P. Agarwal said.

Young couples in cities often meet in parks as dating before marriage is frowned upon by many Indian parents but they are harassed by police who threaten to report them or ask for bribes.