By Dr Ahmed Mohiuddin Siddiqui
*Women not safe in Modi’s new India even in train’s washrooms
A railway travelling ticket examiner (TTE) is supposed to examine or check the passengers’ tickets so that the Indian Railways do not suffer financial loss. If the TTE trespasses into wrong or prohibited territory, Indian Railways suffers loss of face!
Gone are the days of peeping Toms. Now, we have recording or filming Toms who do not allow women even to relieve themselves peacefully.
A TTE was arrested by the railway police in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu after he was allegedly caught filming a woman passenger while she was using the washroom during the journey.
A washroom is supposed to be a private place
The 26-year-old TTE is alleged to have used his mobile phone and recording skills to film women inside the washroom by placing the camera near the windowpane of the washroom.
The local Arakonnam police have booked the railway sexual predator in uniform under Indian Penal Code (IPC) Sections 354-C (voyeurism) and 354-D (stalking), Section 4 (Penalty for harassment of woman) of the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Harassment of Woman Act, and also under Sections 66-B (punishment for dishonestly receiving stolen communication device) and Section 67 (punishment for publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form) of the IT Act.
It is a case of sexual abuse against a woman by abusing the mobile phone filming technology for ugly and wrong purposes.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi
The incident allegedly happened when the woman, studying in a private engineering college in Coimbatore — another southern Indian city — was travelling to Chennai.
When the woman went to the washroom to relieve herself, she noticed that someone was recording her from the window. The shell-shocked woman immediately rushed out of washroom and alerted the other fellow passengers.
They confronted the TTE and forcibly took away his phone from him. The phone allegedly contained several other such videos of women using the washroom.
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The TTE, who has been identified as S Meganathan from Sooramangalam in the stainless steel Salem city in Tamil Nadu, is alleged to have stood by the footboard of moving trains and recorded women inside the washrooms by placing the camera near the window.
The woman filed a complaint with the railway police in the next station and the TTE was arrested and has been taken into judicial custody.
It is significant to recall that The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) released the ‘Crime in India’ report for the year 2017 in 2019 after a delay of more than one and a half years.
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It showed a shocking increase of 16% in crimes against women when compared to 2013 — the last year before the Narendra Modi government came to power in India. Most of the crimes against women are either not reported or under-reported.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s claims and promises about safety of women fall flat on the face as Indian women are not safe anywhere from sexual crimes — from home to the hotel rooms, trial rooms in shopping malls to washrooms in the Indian Railways!
No wonder, India has been dubbed as the Rape capital of the world.
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