BHIVPAACHI GARAZ ASA!: Police violence at the Congress’ Sadbuddhi Yatra at CM’s Sanquelim residence on Sunday evening August 1, 2021. They were protesting against a number of rape cases in Goa including the rape of two teenagers at Benaulim beach in South Goa. Where is safety for women in Goa when the police think nothing of tearing the clothes of women in protest?

Why order policemen and policewomen to tear a protestor’s clothes?

WHEN policemen and policewomen on duty do not know how to control a group of people protesting peacefully, it is sad news. What is wrong with our men and women of the police force? Is it okay in their book to rip away a woman’s or for that matter any man’s clothes while dealing with them in a public protest? It is akin to hitting below the belt and that too without any justification.
So the group of protestors, many of them women, wanted to appeal to Chief Minister Pramod Sawant (who is also Home Minister of Goa) to the law and order situation in Goa and crimes against women. This is evidenced by the recent rape of two teenagers at Benaulim beach and other rape cases. They decided to offer a bouquet of flowers to the CM outside his house, hoping he would listen to them at least.
Instead, a huge police force outside his house in Sankhali on Sunday, August 1, 2021, anxious to make sure none of the activists met the CM, started forcing the activists to back off and in the process the policewomen with deliberate viciousness tore some of the protesting women’s clothes! Says Devsurabhee Yaduvanshi of the Congress mahila activists, she didn’t expect she would be targeted so badly by the policewomen and some of the policemen.
Of course she along with two other women so treated were traumatized. So much for wanting to say hello to the Home Minister of Goa! In a Facebook talk with Mary Dias she speaks about the event and how bad she felt both for herself and some of the other women in the agitation. Is this what police training in handling agitators all about? How to tear off a woman’s clothes so that she is caught unawares and half naked? Surely policemen and policewomen should be more professionally trained in how to handle men and women who have a right to express their disappointment in any public manner?
Instead, we have this foul shameful episode being aired all over the electronic media as if to say, look, what will happen to you if you are women activists of whatever category…who is shamed more? I would think the government and its men and women in uniform!
Do we take it that Goa is now a brutal police state and if you want to agitate or protest about anything, perhaps you too should put on some armor to protect yourself from sadistic law makers and even more sadistic law enforcers? Says Devasurabhee, “I hold the Home Minister who is also the Chief Minister responsible. The police are mere puppets…” It is a shame that such an incident happened outside the CM’s residence in his own home constituency.
She appeals to various human rights organisations to take serious not of this kind of crude behavior on the part of those in uniform and who represent the State, “For today it is me, tomorrow it can be your mother, wife, daughter…I still don’t understand what we did wrong in protesting peacefully and asking to meet the chief minister!”
Devasurabhee admits the group was cordoned off and she and some women had bypassed the cordon in an attempt to meet the CM, but does this warrant such foul behavior on the part of the police force, to shame the women before a crowd of 500 and in front of the media? Is this what the BJP is all about, how to humiliate women at home and in public. No, no, she says, it was not incidental, not the first time, it is happening too often in any agitation which seeks a peaceful resolution of a public grievance. Her kurta was torn twice deliberately and viciously, she was injured when she fell, “I had to be taken to hospital, my ankle was strained, my leg swollen and I am still in considerable pain. It was a deliberate act…” Their dignity was torn to pieces along with their clothes.
SO WITH this latest public-police face-off I’m also asking along with Surabhee: Has Goa become a police state, a banana republic where women get hassled and molested in broad daylight and that too by those who are supposed to protect them? Is Goa no longer a progressive and safe state for women young and old and in the long run is the RSS-BJP mindset not too far removed from the fascist mindset of say … the Taliban? Making the comparison makes blood run cold for I have both regard and respect for some BJP people, but where are the women who have the guts to speak up when it comes to women?
Hey, I’m not convinced Chief Minister Pramod Sawant gave the orders to the police to manhandle the women agitators last Sunday evening in Sankhalin to the extent that their clothes were pulled apart. If so perhaps I dare to suggest that CM should have a heart to heart with his wife Sulakshana Sawant. From my very brief acquaintance of her a while ago she came across as a sweetly outspoken, well-read, modern day woman. She is not above telling her hubby dear to get Goa’s police force go get some training in how to handle protesting people be they women or men — without ripping off their clothes or injuring them? No man deserves this, women even less so.
ON that note in these still covid-infested troubled times I wish ache din will come for Goa and my Bharatdesh! Oh yes, may we also get a woman prime minister and more women legislators in our Parliament …on the lines of Germany’s former Chancellor Angela Merkle and New Zealand’s Jacinda Aarden soooon! India needs more women up there to educate men about what good housekeeping of a nation is all about. Till then it’s avjo, selamat datang, poiteverem, arrivedecci and vachun yetta here for now.

— Mme Butterfly