I walk into a police station

Gender Agenda newsletter: I walk into a police station

For years, Pollachi was known for being a languid, film-adjacent town, with sage green fields; a million tall, brown coconut trees; and an occasional overgrowth of flowers, all set against the backdrop of hillocks. In 2019, though, this narrative changed. That year, the news of nine men sexually assaulting, video-graphing, and blackmailing women between 2016 and 2018 came to light.

They — all in their 30s — trapped young women under the pretext of getting them work. The assaults took place at various locations, but particularly at the house of one of the accused, K. Thirunavukkarasu. It took a courageous 19-year-old to report the heinous acts of assault done to her in a moving car. On May 13, the Mahila court in Coimbatore found all nine guilty and sentenced them to life imprisonment.

When the reports first came to light in 2019, there was anger across the State. On prime-time TV shows, people on panels asked for death sentences for the accused. However, there was an undercurrent. Tweets were written asking what the women were doing, befriending or meeting strange men in the first place.

In March 2024, I filed my first community service register (CSR) report at the Abhiramapuram police station in Chennai because a man stopped me at 9.30 p.m., threw some deeply offensive, sexually-charged words at me, and drove away. I ran for my life. The process of creating this report was daunting. I was clearly agitated, but was asked to “be calm” and recount the incident to four officers that evening. Promises of a detailed investigation and examining the CCTV cameras were made. I was asked to go back to the area the following day to tell a beat cop exactly where the assault took place.

Although I had requested a first information report (FIR) be filed, only a CSR was issued. A month later, I was called and asked to write a document stating that the investigation was inconclusive but that the police had done their best. It turned out that none of the CCTV cameras in the area were working. A positive outcome, however, was that patrolling on the beat was increased.

Though justice was not exactly served here, this incident taught me that for incremental change to take place, we need to walk into a police station to report incidents of sexual assault for a difference to happen. A vindication could very well be on the horizon.

Green menstruation