Lila was stalked, raped and murdered and you can’t be bothered to log in to TypeKey? Shame on shameless you.

The local Vrindavan (Uttar Pradesh) town, the entire worldwide ISKCON community, and hopefully beyond, are outraged and shocked.

The local Vrindvan police??? Well…..

“He is already dead so no further action in this case is possible. There is nothing more to investigate,” an Indian police spokesman said yesterday. But the family is understood to be angry with police inaction in the lead-up to the shooting. Lila’s mother, Susan Manning, was quoted previously as saying that the family had warned police about the “psychopath” stalker, but nothing had been done. “Can you imagine in Australia if somebody raped your daughter? They’d be rounded up straight away,” Mr Salter said. “But unfortunately India is a little bit of a wild west and that just didn’t happen,” he said. The family now hoped some action would taken in Delhi over the local police inaction, he said. “They would like the situation [changed] where they felt powerless to get help from the police because of the extent of corruption that was there [in Vrindavan],” Mr Salter said. “It was really that loss of proper judicial intervention that was responsible for this and they would hope that culture could be changed.”

Indians and foreigners both need to band together and do something… this is way too serious.

Can you see why we women are afraid to walk the streets there even in the daytime? UP is especially bad.

Still, it’s a major story. I’m hoping ISKCON (as a huge organization in India) can put pressure on the local police and goverment to improve safety for women in Vrindavan.

http://www.prabhupada.org/rama/?p=4208

September 4, 2007 10:30 AM

Excellent article!

About time someone said this.

I am a transvestite and this sort of thing happens to me as well, only sometimes it turns into actual or threatened violence.

No wonder transgendered people like me are ashamed to be men. The way you are responding to this is where feminism really starts.

Go girl!

ElliottCB

September 4, 2007 10:33 AM

Brusselsexpats – “It’s difficult to know what to do about harassment. I don’t fancy the idea of screaming in the street. How about buying a Rottweiler?”

How about learning thai boxing? (Or karate.) It has the advantage of also keeping you fit. A kick in the nadgers will stop even the most determined sex pest, and a martial arts-style kick might actually kill the bastard. Guys do occasionally die of neurogenic shock because their nervous system collapses in response to the effect; I’m assured that a woman is normally in no danger of prosecution if she happens to kill someone in this manner. At any rate, it will be a while before he does it again.

Just do me a favour and wait until he actually tries to physically assault you, okay? I don’t intend to go back to being single, but I’m less than anxious to face an impromptu sparring session because I smiled a bit nervously at a pretty girl. Okay?

The harassed strike back

I have determined no longer to mutely ignore the uninvited sexual advances of strangers

Bidisha Tuesday September 4, 2007 The Guardian

I am completely average. Average face, talents, life. Accordingly, I take the amount of sexual harassment I suffer to be average too. That’s pretty much every day since I was around 13, by males of all ages, nationalities and types, singly and in groups, usually on the street, in parks or public transport. The harassment takes the form of leering, jeering, tongue-clicking, hissing, nudging, comments in my ear, following, physical blocking and gropes. Every woman I’ve spoken to, of whatever country, whatever age, knows what I mean.

I decided on a new strategy, after I was groped by two groovy young South Americans and then commented on lewdly by two Englishmen in their 50s – see, it’s just like a Benetton ad – on the same day. Later, I was perusing the peppers in Sainsbury’s when someone hissed “Hello, sweetie” into my ear. I turned to see a thirtysomething Middle Eastern guy with clear features and bright brown eyes, wearing a neat shirt and pressed chinos. He must have popped out of the office to bug a woman and pick up some snacks.

“Why do you think it’s OK to harass women?” I said calmly, loudly. The man froze, then a look of fear washed over his features. He shrank like a worm. “What?” he snivelled, his eyes sliding to the floor. “I didn’t say anything bad …”

“It doesn’t matter what you said, I didn’t say that you could speak to me. It’s not OK to whisper in a woman’s ear when she’s going about her business. “

He didn’t walk away so much as dissolve, and I marvelled at my new method. How could a compulsive irritant’s bravado be deflated so easily? Do they rely on their victims mutely accepting it?

Of course there are degrees of seriousness. On Sunday I was jogging in Hyde Park when two boys of 18 or so rode up on bikes alongside the jogger in front of me. One of them reached out and squeezed the woman’s bottom before making away slowly with his friend. She went rigid with shock, and stopped running. I saw the strength drain down her into the ground as she began to shake.

I asked her if she was all right, and suggested that we run together, since the boys had come back into view and were blocking their bikes around two other women who were walking along a parallel path.

We did so, but there was no way to avoid these boys and no way I was going to let them get away with groping three women in two minutes. As we approached I told them I’d witnessed everything, I was going to call the police, how dare they. The boys were well-spoken, and the perpetrator wasn’t afraid. He whipped his mobile out of his pocket and tried to give it to me.

“I’m not calling the police on your phone because they’ll think that we know each other and that it’s all a big joke,” I said coolly. “The police are back there, I just passed them. The longer you stick around the easier it is for me to give them a description. There are CCTV cameras all over the park. Can’t you see them? You should leave now.”

It went on; he was enjoying himself at first. He knew that men who assault women get away with it. We four joggers were walking slowly in a line, like an army, and I shouted righteous things as the boys finally edged their bikes away. As we parted the women jokily congratulated me, their she-knight in sports shorts.

I went on ahead and then, as in a nightmare, I saw the boys again up ahead, watching me languidly. My muscles filled with adrenaline and, fuelled by decades of rage, I began to pursue the boys like a killer cyborg – or a killer midget cyborg in bottle-end specs. They freaked on instinct and pedalled hard but there I was, powering across the park and shaking my fist, miraculously keeping up.

It’s comical: two cycling harassers fleeing from a bionic art critic. They were scared by the colossal, muscular force of my anger; but what was I going to do, stand on one chap while I biffed the other? And once the amusement at my own ridiculousness abated, the grief returned. The street harassment, the job harassment, the jokes, the exploitation, are all part of the same thing. Thousands of years into “civilisation” and a woman can’t even jog in peace. It’s a shame, because endurance sports are the only thing I’m above average at.

· Bidisha is a novelist and arts critic

contactbidisha@hotmail.com

Hehehehe.

Then again, maybe things are going on that I am not privy to?

Aren’t you giving Indian men too much credit, PG?

At first I thought so too, Nala. But realistically speaking, the financially challenged segment in India is a HUGE segment and they also have the concept of marriage, and by extension, the concept of “relationship”, “mutual attraction” etc. So I think the author of the op-ed piece was just trying to squeeze out some “class issue” out of this where there is none, and she did a poor job.

If, as she asserts, they cannot distinguish between “smooching” a woman they are in a relationship with from kissing a stranger who is not interested, then well, I think they would be openly kissing and feeling up each other’s mothers when visiting friends at their homes.