NEW DELHI: Ever so often I receive on some social platform or the other a video of a policeman beating a person with a “lathi.” It is stark and cruel and is usually sound-tracked with screams of pain and conducted in the open with a crowd watching. This is now an Indian sport.
Yesterday, I received one of a naked man and his naked wife with a three year old child in Greater Noida whose lack of clothes (shown in a pile at their feet) was triggered by a police inspector’s wrath because he felt they had slurred him by reportedly coming to the station to make a complaint. In a gut wrenching shot, the husband is shielding her naked body with his. A crowd of men, women and children are watching this “tamasha” with glee.
The TV station called News X that dispatched this clip has asked for action and even named the cop demanding he be made accountable. Why is denuding a woman in public such a penalty of choice, we have so much of it?
Of course, the UP government has counter accused the couple of deliberately shedding their clothes to ‘blackmail’ the police.
I’d buy that if the cops had moved and taken the two naked adults with baby in tow into custody.
Minutes later comes one of a young man being held across a pole or a pillar by his hands while a policeman whack him as people watch. This is a your common garden variety of public flogging by men in uniform and they have a certain sadistic commonality about them.
Facebook probably gets one a day. Rural setting. Trees in the background, a few cyclists and the victim trussed like a chicken. From UP, Bihar, even Mumbai, sanctioned violence caught by a thousand mobile phones and vicariously uploaded. There is even one of a cop thrashing a guy while other cops laugh at the scene. An obviously sexually frustrated cop in the assault on Indian Army fans is seen brutally hitting a protesting lady.
In Patna male constables assault a woman and a man who comes to her rescue. In a Telangana village the going rate for accepting a complaint at a cop station after negotiations is Rs5,000.
We have all seen these videos and the injustice and the pain have become entertainment. There is no protest, no rage at the number of such gross incidents, like oh, here is another one, look four guys holding the man while the senior cop belts him. We have become so immune to these clips we sometimes do not even click them on.
I am watching one of these “sock it him” clips on NDTV and thinking aloud that there is so much of it out there with a new video every day that the cop in question knows he is in good company. Do these cops gat taken to task, does the government order an inquiry (what sort of inquiry do you need when it is on tape and going viral?). We never get to know if there was action taken. Surely, the act of beating up people by harnessing them or holding them down in public space with a hundred plus witnesses is totally illegal. We are not so naïve as to believe that cops don’t thrash people in jails and holding cells but the arrogance of doing it in public clearly underscores their lack of fear of any consequences.
Take this SP in Greater Noida. There stand a man and a woman totally without clothes cowering to cover her breasts with their baby. The husband looks stunned as dozens of idiots watch on.
This is 2016. Dalits or Brahmins or Buddhists, who cares, if two adults are stripped get them off the streets then file a case against them for indecent exposure. ..or be suspended for ordering the gross assault on dignity and privacy.
Yesterday, I received one of a naked man and his naked wife with a three year old child in Greater Noida whose lack of clothes (shown in a pile at their feet) was triggered by a police inspector’s wrath because he felt they had slurred him by reportedly coming to the station to make a complaint. In a gut wrenching shot, the husband is shielding her naked body with his. A crowd of men, women and children are watching this “tamasha” with glee.
The TV station called News X that dispatched this clip has asked for action and even named the cop demanding he be made accountable. Why is denuding a woman in public such a penalty of choice, we have so much of it?
Of course, the UP government has counter accused the couple of deliberately shedding their clothes to ‘blackmail’ the police.
I’d buy that if the cops had moved and taken the two naked adults with baby in tow into custody.
Minutes later comes one of a young man being held across a pole or a pillar by his hands while a policeman whack him as people watch. This is a your common garden variety of public flogging by men in uniform and they have a certain sadistic commonality about them.
Facebook probably gets one a day. Rural setting. Trees in the background, a few cyclists and the victim trussed like a chicken. From UP, Bihar, even Mumbai, sanctioned violence caught by a thousand mobile phones and vicariously uploaded. There is even one of a cop thrashing a guy while other cops laugh at the scene. An obviously sexually frustrated cop in the assault on Indian Army fans is seen brutally hitting a protesting lady.
In Patna male constables assault a woman and a man who comes to her rescue. In a Telangana village the going rate for accepting a complaint at a cop station after negotiations is Rs5,000.
We have all seen these videos and the injustice and the pain have become entertainment. There is no protest, no rage at the number of such gross incidents, like oh, here is another one, look four guys holding the man while the senior cop belts him. We have become so immune to these clips we sometimes do not even click them on.
I am watching one of these “sock it him” clips on NDTV and thinking aloud that there is so much of it out there with a new video every day that the cop in question knows he is in good company. Do these cops gat taken to task, does the government order an inquiry (what sort of inquiry do you need when it is on tape and going viral?). We never get to know if there was action taken. Surely, the act of beating up people by harnessing them or holding them down in public space with a hundred plus witnesses is totally illegal. We are not so naïve as to believe that cops don’t thrash people in jails and holding cells but the arrogance of doing it in public clearly underscores their lack of fear of any consequences.
Take this SP in Greater Noida. There stand a man and a woman totally without clothes cowering to cover her breasts with their baby. The husband looks stunned as dozens of idiots watch on.
This is 2016. Dalits or Brahmins or Buddhists, who cares, if two adults are stripped get them off the streets then file a case against them for indecent exposure. ..or be suspended for ordering the gross assault on dignity and privacy.
