Shocking: 17-year-old girl in Bengaluru harassed by half-naked man

Another shocking incident has come to light in the city of Bengaluru. On May 23, around 5:30pm, a 17-year-old girl was out shopping with a friend in Koramangala, when she was accosted by a man in a car. Apparently, he stopped the car next to one of the girls and, and attempted to ask them something. The girl thought that the guy needed directions so she walked towards him and found him naked from waist down. He then allegedly misbehaved and asked her if she would perform oral sex.

There were not many people around on that particular road that time and the guy sought out the opportunity to accost the girls. Fearing physical harm, the girls couldn’t do much and the guy drove away, according to the police.

"This happened to my daughter today; tomorrow it will be somebody else. I want women to report these incidents so that the police can take action against such perverts," the girl's father, a paediatric surgeon, told Bangalore Mirror.

The girl's father accompanied his daughter to the police station where they lodged an FIR and with the help of cops they are now scanning CCTV footage to catch the accused. The Koramangala police have taken the step of sharing the car's registration number with the traffic police to track down the vehicle.

Also read: Four out of five Indian women in cities have faced Public harassment: Survey

In 2014, an annual report survey by a popular online travel portal had announced Bengaluru e the 3rd ‘safest cities for women’ in India. But things seem to have rapidly gone downhill, if the spate of incidents of women being harassed is any indication.

Earlier this year, a 21-year-old Tanzanian student was stripped and paraded naked by an angry mob in Bengaluru, allegedly in retaliation to a case of drunken driving, where a Sudanese student's car ran over a local woman Hesarghatta area. They dragged her out of the car, assaulted her and her friends, and brunt down their vehicle.

Soon after that incident, another incident came to light wherein a young girl was forcibly taken by an unidentified man from in front of her PG accommodation and dragged to an under construction building, where he tried to molest her. The act of him physically lifting and carrying her was captured on CCTV.

Also read: Towards making the Capital safer for women: Panic buttons in Delhi buses

Last month, Aishwarya Subramanian,  a Bengaluru-based journalist was slut-shamed by an auto driver because she was wearing a knee-length summer dress. And then another girl was racially abused by an auto driver in Bengaluru, cursed for being from the north-east and was asked to go back to her native place.

The slew of such incidents is indeed disturbing. To the extent that Bengaluru city police are considering launching a safety app for women and children, similar to an app that already exists in Delhi. But it's time the city answered the question mark on the safety of women. It definitely does not want to become the next Delhi in that respect!

Feature Image Credit: lintvwpri.files.wordpress.com