Union home minister P. Chidambaram on Friday rebuked Assam’s director-general of police Jayanta Narayan Choudhury over his insensitive remark that the police was not “like an ATM machine” that could respond to a crime scene the moment someone inserted a card, saying no one should be allowed to make light of incidents like the stripping and molesting of a young woman on a busy Guwahati street, video clips of which have gone viral and horrified the nation.
“If they have tried to make light of the incident I strongly condemn it. No one should make light of an incident of molesting a woman or a child,” the home minister told reporters in Chandigarh, when asked to comment on the DGP’s “ATM remark”, and another police officer’s comment that while the national media played up this incident, it ignored molestation of girls from the Northeast in Delhi, the “rape capital”.
Mr Chidambaram said: “The remark is in poor taste. There is no such thing as ‘rape capital’. Every incident of molestation is condemnable.” He said he would speak to Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi on the matter.
In Guwahati, a fourth person was arrested on Friday for the Monday night incident in front of a bar on the Guwahati-Shillong Road. Twelve others involved have been identified on the basis of video footage, and the DGP said they would be apprehended shortly. He admitted the police should have acted swifter in identifying and picking up the accused.
The incident has triggered huge outrage across Guwahati and an NGO has put up huge hoardings across the city with photographs of the 12 culprits still at large, saying they had “shamed” Assamese society, asking people to inform the police of their whereabouts.
The Union home minister also asked state governments to take action against illegal diktats by “khap panchayats”, such as the one in Baghpat that has “banned” love marriages and barred women under 40 from going out to shop and using mobiles outside their homes.
“There is no place for illegal diktats in a democratic society. If anybody takes action against a boy or girl, action should be taken against the person trying to enforce these illegal codes... I would expect the state government to take action,” he said.