For the team of journalists working with Khabar Lahariya , a newspaper run by women in Uttar Pradesh, the situation seemed hopeless. For nine months, the State police sat on their complaints against a serial stalker. But within 48 hours of their story appearing on Twitter, the culprit was in police custody.
Khabar Lahariya reporters described the “nightmarish stalking” on the newspaper’s Facebook page. Six members of the KL team were harassed through phone calls by a man using numerous phone numbers. The caller, who identified himself as Nishu, threatened, intimidated and stalked them for over 3 months.
“The KL reporters filed complaints and formal FIRs were registered at police stations in Banda and Chitrakoot. One complaint was filed in in Mahoba as well. Despite providing information and statements to the police on many occasions, no action was taken,” said Shalini Joshi one a founding member of Khabar Lahariya .
“Ironically, for journalists who report on gender issues, the very process of filing complaints and visiting several police stations for repeated recording of statements turned out to be a harassment in itself,” she said.
The reporters also complained on the Women Power Line 1090 and to the Vodafone company. But the harassment continued.
Then all of a sudden, on the morning of September 16, the U.P. police nabbed the alleged stalker.
What roused the police into action was the publication of the story of harassment, stalking and police inaction on September 14 in a web magazine, The Ladies Finger . The story was tweeted and re-tweeted. Activists and journalists expressed outrage. Shocked social media users tagged the twitter handle of the Chief Minister’s Office @CMOfficeUP. The Chief Minister’s Office contacted the Banda police and asked for immediate action.
AbusedSixty-five-year-old typist Krishna Kumar was more fortunate: unlike the KL reporters, he didn’t have to wait for several months to get justice.
Barely hours after a Sub-Inspector in Lucknow abused the elderly man on Saturday, September 19, and kicked his typewriter repeatedly till it broke, he was suspended. The District Magistrate and the police chief personally came to meet Mr. Kumar, offered their apologies and gifted him two typewriters. In this case too, the happy ending came after the photo of the helpless man being humiliated by the policeman had gone viral on the social media. The CMO’s social media department again coordinated with the police to ensure justice for Mr. Kumar.
While many applauded the swift action in both the instances, there were others who expressed concern that the social media had to intervene for the common man to get justice.
Asked if KL should have gone to the social media with its story earlier, Ms. Joshi said: “May be. But after filing two FIRs and one complaint, we honestly believed police would take action. We were wrong though.”
Sudhir Panwar, a member of State Planning Commission, saw both the instances as a “new way of policing” and “at least the beginning of larger modernisation” of the police department in UP. “While we are happy that action was swift after we went online with our story, it is quite unfortunate that police sleep on people’s complaint,” said Ms. Joshi. “Not every woman has access to the social media, especially in rural India.”
