Boys will not be Boys

On October 13, 15-year-old Kabita Das, a class-X student of Bijoy Sarani High School, was stabbed to death when she came out of school on a lunch break. Her killer, Bikram Chandra Sarker, was a university student who had been stalking her for quite a while. Kabita had rejected his romantic overtures and hence paid the price – with her life. Her father had complained to a public official but no one had listened. It was only after she was brutally murdered that Bikram was caught and handed over to the police. 

Stalking, despite a law prohibiting it, is a nightmare most young girls and women must bear on a daily basis. Local thugs hanging around near corners, outside school, taunt girls on the streets, make lewd comments and indecent proposals. Sometimes lust hides under the pretext of 'love'. Refusal to reciprocate can lead to frightening consequences. Jolly Akhter, 18, an undergraduate student of Mongalbari Degree College of Jopurhat, had been stalked by Abu Sayem, a married man from her village. When Jolly directly rejected his proposal, Abu threatened to kidnap her and later followed her to her grandmother's house where her parents thought she would be safe. Abu, with his accomplices, ripped open the tin roof of the house where Jolly was sleeping, poured petrol on her and set her on fire – she had 20 percent burns on her face and hands. 

Often those who try to stand up for the victims have to pay a heavy price. Chanpa Rani, the mother of four daughters and an employee of Faridpur Sugar Mill, was killed by Devashish Saha Rony, a stalker who ran her over with his motorbike. Chanpa Rani had called him and told him to stop harassing her two daughters. Four years later, Rony was sentenced to death for the murder, though the police could not arrest him as he had absconded.

It took decades for human rights activists and hundreds of tragic incidents, including innumerable suicides by the victims, to convince the state that such stalking should be treated as a crime and therefore punishable. The court in 2011 declared stalking of girls and women illegal, asking the government to treat it as sexual harassment. For the first time, the chauvinistic term 'eve teasing', that effectively diffused the gravity of the offence, was to be replaced with the more appropriate word 'stalking'. According to the Women and Children Repression Prevention Act, stalking is a sexual offence and has a maximum sentence of ten years imprisonment (the minimum being three years). The High Court, in fact, gave additional directives to address the issue of stalking. These include – counselors for victims of stalking, separate cells at every police station across the country to deal with stalking cases and bringing all cyber cafes (from where stalkers often harass girls through social media) under registration. Interestingly, in 2010, the HC had ordered deputy commissioners of all districts and some other government agencies to be vigilant about stalking and take steps to stop the crime.

Despite such strong messages from the High Court, stalking is still a reality for most young girls. The fear that their pubescent daughter will be harassed on the streets or worse, be kidnapped and raped, prompts parents to marry her off as early as possible, forcing her to drop out of school. Stalking, therefore, is a prime cause of child marriage which spares the child from sexual harassment on the streets but locks her into a prison of systematic sexual abuse within the legitimate walls of her husband's home. 

The State Minister for Women and Children Affairs Ministry, Meher Afroz Chumki, seems to be taking some decisive steps to address sexual harassment of girls and women. She has said that her ministry will ask all deputy commissioners to form committees at all education institutes to hear complaints of sexual harassment and take appropriate action. 

Such committees, if they actually materialise, could be the beginning of a conscious effort to acknowledge the criminality of stalking. Schools and colleges have to take initiatives to make sure their students, whether inside the school or outside, are not harassed and, if they are, that they can complain to the committee, which can then take action with the help of the law. Public officials, whether they are upazila highups or OCs, must be motivated to take reports of sexual harassment seriously and catch the offenders promptly. The state must ensure that stalkers and sex offenders do not get away by using influence and money.

But what about the biggest challenge – how do we change public perception of stalking? For decades, our society, in the cities and villages, have shown inordinate indulgence to louts making catcalls, lewd gestures or even physically touching girls and women. They do this on the streets, inside buses or underpasses, on the footbridges – it could be any public place. The girls try to ignore the daily harassment and tolerate it as part of being female. But what about the rest of the people – why do they not find it objectionable, unless one of their own is victimised? Aggressive, sexually predatory behaviour towards women is justified as something that males cannot help having, hence the 'boys will be boys' expression used universally. It is the tacit acceptance of this malaise by society in general that needs to be discarded for good through intensive social messages on television, radio, in cinema, street drama and through programmes that target young people. Public shaming of any form of sexual harassment must go hand in hand with enforcement of anti-stalking laws. It is only when society wholeheartedly condemns this evil and shuns it as something despicable that girls and women will be free of the daily trauma they face on the streets.

The writer is Deputy Editor, Editorial and Op-ed, The Daily Star.