Anger is now brewing against the police and their alleged brutality in handling the garment workers protesting against the now-rolled back amendments to the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) Scheme.
Garments and Textile Workers Union is now planning to lodge a complaint with the Karnataka State Human Rights Commission. “We are trying to get a group of harassed women workers to lodge a complaint with the KSHRC. But not many are willing to come forward, fearing retribution by the police,” said K.R. Jayaram of the union.
Madina Taj, a member of the union, said the workers also feared that lodging a complaint may jeopardise their jobs too.
Garment factory workers are also planning to hold a rally on Friday against the police brutality. Multiple trade unions are open to supporting the rally. However, the final modalities are yet to be worked out. The National Federation of Indian Women and All India United Trade Union Centre are among the many organisations that have condemned the police action.
B.N. Netravathi, who works at Shahi Exports, a garment factory, bore the brunt of lathis as the protesters were being caned by the police on Tuesday near Peenya. “Policemen used highly objectionable language … We were only asking for our money and were peaceful,” she recounted.
Ms. Netravathi is not alone. What added insult to the injury was that there were no women police officials dealing with women protesters on both the days.
“Many women workers complained that the police used foul language against them, and in some cases, pulled them by their hair and manhandled them,” said Ms. Taj.
Multiple video recordings that have now emerged show policemen beating up women even after they have fallen on the ground and were pleading with them.
N.S. Megharikh, Police Commissioner, said: "We exercised a lot of restraint as a majority of the protesters were women. In fact, it came to a stage where the miscreants were using women as a shield. Many have taken objection to male police personnel being deployed for controlling the crowd which was predominantly of women. But there are rules that women police personnel need to carry out arrests of women. But nowhere in the world there are norms that women protesters need to be handled by women personnel alone."
Only 608 women police personnel in city
Ideally, women police personnel should have been at the forefront of the police action against protesting women on Monday and Tuesday. But are there enough women police personnel in the city to have taken on the women garment workers who had taken to the streets?
The 15,000-plus-strong city police force has only 608 women. While conceding that police personnel may have crossed the line, a senior police official said lack of enough women personnel was a systemic issue that needed to be addressed.
Proposals to raise all-woman companies in the Karnataka State Reserve Police (KSRP) and the City Armed Reserve (CAR) are yet to be realised.
Journalists attacked
At least three mediapersons in the city were also beaten up by the police during the protests.
On Monday, Srikanth Sharma, chief photo journalist with an English daily, was caned by a policeman when he clicked photographs of police beating up women protesters. Sharanu Gurikar, a video journalist from a local news channel, was caned by police personnel at Hebbagodi on Tuesday. Senior photographer Saggere Radhakrishna from Karnataka Photo News was assaulted by miscreants at Jalahalli Cross for clicking photographs of those pelting stones. Karnataka Union of Working Journalists has condemned the attacks on journalists.
