In a case of moral policing, a 28-year-old woman who was riding pillion with her boyfriend was stopped and harassed by a passerby for not wearing proper clothes.
According to The News Minute, the incident took place in Bengaluru’s HSR Layout on Thursday night. “You must follow Indian rules. Please wear proper clothes,” the stranger yelled at the 28-year-old techie from Mumbai who was wearing shorts. The incident was shot on a mobile camera by her boyfriend and later uploaded on Facebook, sparking an outrage.
The woman told The News Minute, “I heard someone yelling. I was riding pillion and I looked to my right side. There was a man on a two-wheeler, who began yelling at me and said, ‘Don’t you have any clothes at home?'.” She also said the the man further argued that Indian women must not wear “such” clothes. The woman was wearing shorts and a T-shirt.
Her boyfriend, who is also a resident of HSR Layout, parked his bike near the sidewalk and demanded that the man, too, get off his bike. He then started shooting the video. “My boyfriend began questioning him and when the man realised that we were shooting the whole thing, he lowered his voice and became polite. But he did not stop telling me that I must not wear such clothes and that it's ‘Indian rules’. My boyfriend yelled back; he told him that we are free to choose what we wear and he has no right to tell me what to wear,” the woman told the The News Minute.
“Maybe he expected us to be scared. I also told him that I would go to the police. That’s when he got back on his bike and fled,” she told the portal. Despite several protests and outrages, incidents of faux morality are on the rise in the city. In March, several students of Christ University took to social media to share their experiences of being ‘morally policed’ even by cops.
