Guwahati public molestation widely condemned
Source: The Sangai Express / Agencies

Guwahati, July 13 2012: In Guwahati, outraged activists have put up hoardings across the city with photographs of the 11 culprits who molested and stripped a teenage girl four days ago and asked people to inform the police about their where-abouts.

"We have put up hoardings in some prominent places and at all the bus stops in the city.

The basic objective of putting the photographs of the culprits is to help police to bring the culprits to the book and to create an awareness so that such things do not occur in future," said Avijit Sarma of the NGO Assam Public Works (APW) .

Four of the 11 men have been arrested, police said on Friday as questions were raised over their tardiness in taking action on an incident that has sparked off a nationwide outrage.

"We have recorded the statement of the girl and registered a case against all those involved in the crime.

We have identified all the culprits by checking the video footage captured by a local news channel," said additional superintendent of police (City) Longnit Teron.

"Four of them have already been arrested and search is on to trace the rest.

However, it is taking little time as most of the accused seem to have gone underground due to non-stop media coverage of the incident," Teron added.

He assured the angry people that all the culprits would be arrested soon.

All 11 have been identified and efforts are on to trace the seven other men involved in the crime, an official said.

Asked about the safety of women in Guwahati, the Assam director general of police Jayanta Narayan Chowdhury said, "This incident does not prove that there are predators lurking in the city" .

"This is just an isolated incident when local people took advantage of the situation and indulged in the crime," the DGP said.

The arrested includes a contractual employee of Amtron, Assam government's IT agency, Amarjyoti Kalita.

Kalita, who had also acted in an Assamese serial where he played the role of a policeman, has since been dismissed from service.

Two others who were arrested are Dhananjoy Basfor, a sweeper and Bubul Das a local tradesman, the SP said.

The accused were charged with unlawful assembly, obscene act and assault on a woman with the intent to outrage her modesty, following a written complaint filed by the girl's mother.

The group molested and stripped the teenage girl after she came out with her friends from the restaurant-cum-bar Club Mint on the busy GS Road on Monday night.

Although she cried for help, no one initially came forward to help.

Much later, senior journalist Mukul Kalita, who happened to pass by, stopped the youths and rescued her with the help of police who by then had arrived on the location.

The entire incident was shot on camera by a News Live cameraperson and is now viral on the Internet.

Upon being questioned on the ethics behind shooting a molestation incident live and airing it, the channel said they did it "in public interest" .

Syed Zarir Hussain, the Managing Editor of the TV channel, said, "Had we stopped rolling the camera, these molesters would not have been arrested.

What we did was in public interest.

On the night this incident happened, we showed only the molesters.

We took a call to show the incident the next day as we realised that the molesters would not have be arrested.

Whatever we did, we did for public interest and it is because we showed the video that four people have been arrested" .

The incident triggered massive reaction across the country.

Chief minister Tarun Gogoi has expressed concern over the incident and said that a separate task force would be set up to deal with such crimes against women in Guwahati and other places in the state.

The administration is also planning a crackdown on bars and other such establishments which are open till late night, violating government guidelines.

But that is too little too late, said activists, questioning why the police took so long to reach the spot and why it took them four days to make the arrests even though they had the video clip to go by.

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