UNRELIABLE CHICKEN-HEARTED MALE (BOY) FRIENDS

One common thing in the three unfortunate rape cases that have happened recently in three metro cities, Delhi (Nirbhay case), Bangalore (Infosys campus) and Mumbai (photo journalist case), was that in all the three cases the girls were with their male friends and in none of the three incidents it appears that the macho man have not done much to protect the young girl with whom they were moving.      Either they were tied or got a small bashing by which they kept quiet and it appears they did not do much to save the girl before the unfortunate incident or even after the ghastly act was over.      

  In the recent Mumbai incident it was reported that the victim and accompanying male were taken to the nearby railway station and put in a train.     Understandably the girl must have been great trauma and  was not in a position to re-group herself so soon but what made the male friend not to raise alarm at the station or enroute and get them arrested and grapple with atleast one or two and pin them down.   If I am not mistaken they were not in possession of knives or fire arms.    I am more than sure that if these girls were with their old and weak father or a brother they would have put a far higher degree of resistance to save the girl.

So my advice to all young girls, especially those going out late in the evening/night or to seclude places or parks or  abandoned monuments to  be conscious of the fact that the boy/male accompanying you is going to run away or comfortably get pinned down without much resistance and you need to fend yourself or become pray.    Whatever packs (4, 6 or 8) he must be flexing are cosmetic or steroid driven, neither he has the guts or macho-ness to put stiff resistance in a bit to save the girl.     It is only in the reel life that our hero bashes up 10 to 20 goons to save his heroin, but in the real life, unfortunately, it is a different ball game.   

It is unreasonable to expect the Police to be everywhere, considering our population and short staffed and ill equipped police force.  Added to this, police is used less for policing and more for security services for VIP and VVIPs and crowd control for various procession and Dharnaas which take place on a daily basis. But unfortunately they are used as the fall guys whenever such incidents happen.      If police try to be pro-active and shoo away young girls and boys from parks and seclude places they are blamed for doing morale policing.    Is it possible for the police to appear wherever and whenever you want them. 

Girls should also take stock of the very unsafe environment in which we

are living and spend some time, effort and money in learning self defense techniques.      No doubt it may be difficult to take on 5-6 guys at a time but in many rape cases in is only one or two persons who commit the crime and in such cases girls can definitely bash the guy (s) or atleast put great resistance and create lot of noise by which the attackers  may lose patience or get scared off  and run away or some help can come in by the commotion created.     Last week `Headline Today’ called in some experts (mostly girls) in one of the their special programmes and showed very simple techniques of how to combat such perpetrators.   They also exhibited some very sensitive zones in the body which can be targeted without using much force and if done so even able bodied men can also be disarmed easily.    Delhi Police organizes so many workshops on self defense techniques.       Young girls spend so much of time on FB, internet, gym (to be in good shape looks wise) and dance classes.    Why not spend some time for something which can save their honour and life.

S. Prabhakar

25.8.2013