For women living in Bengaluru slums, harassment is daily affair

BENGALURU: Slum dwellers who live near Tubarahalli Main Road are a hidden bunch. Towering apartments block either side of the path that leads up to this slum where Basheer was electrocuted and killed. Two of his friends are being treated at a private hospital. In the wee hours of Thursday, two women in their twenties Naziya and Sasha (names changed) were allegedly harassed by men on a motorcycle. R Kaleemullah, activist from the NGO Movement for Justice in Shivajinagar had received a call in the afternoon about the alleged molestation attempt. He told Express that when the men tried to abduct one of the women, another raised an alarm. On seeing the men come out of their huts, the duo fled the scene.
Their faces were covered and couldn’t be recognised by the women. “This is common in the slum. Since they live on these empty lands by paying a rent of Rs 500 each for a hut, the land owners and their friends come and harass the women, beat them up and rob them of their money,” Kaleemullah said. The men in the vicinity corroborated the events and said, “It happened early in the morning when they were going to work. We couldn’t say who it was as they had covered their faces with a cloth.” Locals tried to prod the women into revealing what happened to them after which one of the women started shouting at the men for trying to pursuade her to speak to the media. Paavan Khan (38) who had lived in the slum in the past had visited the slum on Thursday morning. He said that both the women were from Dhananjaypur, Nadiya district, West Bengal.
