Thoughts on a New Year molestation

Outside Juhu Marriott hotel in Mumbai, hooligans grope and molest a couple of girls coming out of a New Year party. Hindustan Times lensmen click photos and publish the pictures of women with their skirts torn on its front page, sparking an outrage. However,a DWS writer has a different view.

4 January, 2008:

The Hindustan Times on New Year stunned the nation with pictures of young girls being groped and molested by a crowd of 70-80 people, as they walked out of Mumbai's premier hotel JW Marriott on the New Year's day. The paper also claims that the photographers were the ones who informed the police van as well. Pat pat…

Now, I am slightly confused here. Were the photographers too busy shooting that they did not notice the police van earlier? Or there was no police van at the spot before? Whatever it is, perhaps they could have tried helping the hapless ladies instead of clicking away to glory. This wasn't a page 3 party, damn it.

Of course, the argument from the photographers would be that they were too few against too many molesters. True, but I wonder what would have been the reaction time, if those women were their own friends or wives.

The paper is going hammer and tongs with its own shameful behaviour. To me, the shame is on the paper and the photographers. Remember, this is no war zone where one has no choice but to shoot the gory details. Recently, The Indian Express carried a stunning picture of a Japanese photographer who was shooting pictures in Myanmar, even while he was being shot at by the police. The photographer, Kenji Nagai, died.

However, in this case, the photographers were too busy shooting front page pictures for their paper. More importantly, since there were two of them, one could have at least tried to mobilise help. And if I am right, most newspaper photographers have telephone numbers of policemen in their cell phones. Even if these two did not, 100 is not exactly a very tough number to remember.

This reminds me of another story. A few years back, a Times of India reporter watched an under-aged girl being raped by a mad man in a Mumbai local train and, then filed an exclusive report next day. That time, the reporter gave the excuse that the rapist had a knife. As reports in the following days showed, the rapist was a gangly-looking man and a tight slap was all that was required to end the goon show.

But then, an exclusive report would not have been filed because a rape would have been avoided.

Sadly, we live in times where news has to be made. No wonder, channels and papers are finding new ways of creating them. Maybe it is time they understood that though it is important to report facts, it cannot come at the peril of another person. Like the HT tagline in Mumbai goes -- Let there be light. Perhaps they should change it to" Let there be plight we will definitely report it!"