When pushed to the wall, smell a rat. That is the Congress strategy in Karnataka, under fire for how women were allegedly molested on New Year’s Eve in Bengaluru. In a Facebook post, senior Congress leader Brijesh Kalappa has accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of deliberately trying to give “Bengaluru a terrible reputation” ahead of the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas later this week. Kalappa cites an earlier instance of an alleged attack on a Tanzanian citizen ahead of the Global Investors Meet last year, alleging that it was staged to give the ruling Congress government a bad name. Kalappa ends by insinuating that the media is perhaps a willing partner to this conspiracy. 

A slow clap for Brijesh Kalappa, everyone. 

Strange that Kalappa wrote his post even while the country was outraging over the CCTV footage from Kammanahalli in East Bengaluru. In this extremely disturbing footage, a young woman is molested, just yards away from her home in an East Bengaluru locality. Two men on a scooter accost her as she is walking home after getting off an auto at 2:40am on the intervening night of December 31 and January 1, even while their accomplices stand guard at the end of the road. They push her to the ground when she resists, but not before robbing the woman of her wallet. Maybe Kalappa will imagine this also to be stage managed. 

Facepalm moment for Brijesh Kalappa. 

Politicians like Kalappa or his colleague, Karnataka Home Minister G Parameshwara, have not covered themselves with glory since New Year’s Eve. Parameshwara blamed it on Western influence, almost suggesting that the girls at Brigade Road and MG Road, where “mass molestation” allegedly took place, invited it upon themselves. “Such incidents happen on New Year’s Eve,” Parameshwara matter-of-factly told a news channel, almost as if shrugging off the trauma experienced by several women that night.  

For four days now, victim accounts have been pouring in. Manisha Gupta, a 25-year-old IT professional, told Bangalore Mirror that they were walking back to the MG Road Metro station at 11 pm when an unruly mob struck: 

“We were pushed by a crowd and my friends began surrounding me to protect me from all four sides. In spite of this, I was groped. It was impossible to catch one person in that moving crowd. There were a number of girls there who were in a similar situation. I saw a few of them crying and running for help. It seemed futile. The police were vastly outnumbered – like 20-25 to 1. There was no cheer; women were either worried or scared. It really was mass molestation. I wish the police had managed the situation better.”

Yet another Bengalurean, Chaitali Wasnik, wrote on her Facebook page: “On this new year, some random guy tried to grope me while I was returning home from work and with so much ease he did as if he thought I will not utter a word because I am a scared woman and he has a reason because he is drunk and let him escape.” Chaitali did not let her molester get away and kicked him. 

But not everyone was a Chaitali in that crowd on Brigade Road. On that night, the gloves were off, with hands hunting for prey. Even though Bengaluru police had deployed 1,500 men and women, either the deployment was poorly planned or they were simply not prepared for such a rowdy group. This even though lumpen behaviour on New Year’s Eve on Brigade Road is, according to old-timers in the city, a regular occurrence.

Eyewitnesses spoke of hapless, shrieking, weeping women running away from the mob, pleading with police for protection.

But despite the graphic victim accounts, the Bengaluru police denies any mass molestation took place. They claim to have perused 45 CCTV cameras and found nothing in the footage that points to any criminal activity. Four days since the night of horror, no FIR has been lodged and with the new commissioner Praveen Sood having decided there is no case made out, the Bengaluru police is basically saying “All is well”. 

Fortunately, not everyone in the ruling party is on the same page. Sowmya Reddy, secretary of the Karnataka Mahila Congress, has offered to go along with any victim who wants to file an FIR. 

Four persons have been arrested and they were reportedly stalking the victim for a week now.

What the Kammanahalli footage and the victim accounts from Brigade Road have shown is that Bengaluru is slipping out of control. A city which can easily be hijacked by anti-social elements, as was also seen during the agitation over Cauvery last year where arsonists took over. 

Bengaluru is not an easy city to police with several faultlines. It is often torn between the native Kannadiga population and the huge population of non-Kannadiga outsiders, a majority of them working in the IT sector. It is time for the city police to get its basics right and undertake smart hi-tech policing, armed with quality intel. This new year has only given Bengaluru police a rude wake-up call.