Shabiha Nur Khatoon
While thousands of innocent human pigeons roam the busy thoroughfares of the country there are quite a few cunning cats among them who are stalkers on the prowl deriving sick satisfaction from harassing, threatening and even stabbing women who are not flattered by their unsolicited attention. With the number of registered cases of stalking rising every year, experts suggest the government and civil society should intervene before the situation deteriorates further
Stalkers lurk everywhere and almost every day we come across pathetic stories of victims of stalking in the newspapers. In the last four-five months, five women from Tamil Nadu have perished which shows how deep the problem runs. Of these five, the most notorious was the case of S Swathi, a techie at Infosys in Chennai, who was hacked to death in broad daylight at Nungambakkam railway station.
A few weeks after the incident, reports emerged of two incidents in Chennai where stalkers used Swathi’s example to intimidate the women they had targeted and threatened to kill them.
The social menace is not restricted to any one particular state. After attaining considerable infamy as India’s rape capital, Delhi came second among Indian states in terms of the number of stalking cases registered in a year, according to the National Crime Records Bureau data for 2015.
Four cases were reported from the national capital in the last week itself pointing to the fact that the crime has assumed alarming proportions and, if not tackled forthwith, could well spiral out of control.
Delhi is correctly perceived as being unsafe for women and is in the same league as Uttar Pradesh which registered 519 cases of stalking last year. Maharashtra tops the list with 1,399 registered complaints.
In August, the Delhi Commission for Women chief Swati Maliwal wrote a letter to the Union home ministry pointing to the high frequency of stalking incidents in the national capital. “According to data of the National Crime Records Bureau for 2015, Delhi is not just the rape capital but also the stalking capital of the country,” she wrote.
“A 23-year-old girl was set ablaze because she turned down a stalker’s proposal.
I met that girl who has suffered 95 per cent burns and is battling for life in a hospital,” she wrote in the letter dated August 16, 2016.
On September 20, a 34-year-old man from northwest Delhi allegedly stabbed a 22-year-old woman 22 times! The victim died on the spot. Investigation revealed the accused and the women knew each other and were in a relationship previously. Experts say 80 per cent of the victims know their stalker and the most common is the ‘ex-intimate– rejected’ type.
Rejected stalkers want reconciliation, revenge, or both from a former partner, family member, friend, or professional contact who no longer desires to see them. These stalkers are usually male and of all the typologies, the rejected stalkers are most likely to threaten and assault their victims. Sunday POST speaks to experts on the known and unknown aspects of stalking.
Kapila Khemundu, assistant professor and head of the department of sociology at Central University of Orissa, says stalking is an undesirable behaviour which deserves punishment. “It is a deliberate, repeated, regular act of harassing another person in an aggressive manner and issuing illogical and illegal threats. Khemundu points out the factors behind rising cases of stalking. “Weak socialisation, loose integration with parents, family and society, uncultured peer group, and alcoholism and drug addiction are all responsible for this social phenomenon. The impact of stalking may vary according to the victim’s characteristics and their relationships with the stalker, whether known or unknown, and their past experiences.
In general, the victim suffers varieties of psychological stress and fear of physical assault that reflect in their social life and adversely affect their professional life.” The professor suggests that at the current juncture an attitudinal change is needed towards the opposite sex. Community mobilisation, counselling, strong legislation on stalking, and sufficient coverage of stalking-related issues in the curriculum are also essential to tackle the crime.
These apart, the intervention of civil society groups, voluntary associations, and, above all, the government is absolutely necessary to combat the crime.
The word ‘stalking’ denotes and has long been associated with hunting animals. Only recently the word’s definition has been expanded to include people as prey, says Rabindra Garada, associate professor at the department of sociology, Utkal University.
Garada focuses on stalking from the social point of view. “Efforts to establish new relationships require approaching another person and expressing an interest in seeing the person. Through giving gifts, making declarations of commitment and love, and other similar gestures, individuals reveal their desire to build and maintain relationships. In most cases, the other person either reciprocates, indicating that the interest in the relationship is mutual, or declines all overtures and the relationship comes to an end,” he says.
Garada throws light on the different kinds of stalkers. He speaks of three categories of stalkers: simple obsessional, love obsessional, and erotomanic. Stalkers typed as simple obsessional are the most common and dangerous criminals who usually had a relationship with the victim. The relationship in most cases was intimate.
The second category is love obsessional. In this case, stalkers and victims do not usually know each other. The victim may be an ordinary person or a well-known celebrity. The stalker believes that if s/he is persistent, the victim will eventually come to realise that s/he really cares for her. These stalkers suffer from mental illnesses.
In erotomanic cases, the stalker truly believes that the victim loves him/her, although they have not had a prior relationship, and indeed have never met. Erotomanic stalkers have mental health problems, as they develop delusions based on the fantasy relationship they hope to have or believe they have with their victims.
According to a report published in the ‘Times of India’ in August: “If the ‘rape capital’ tag was not embarrassing enough, Delhi has earned another dubious title, India’s stalking capital, according to latest data from the National Crime Records Bureau. Stalking cases more than doubled in the city last year, jumping from 541 in 2014 to 1,124 in 2015. That puts Delhi in the second spot among all states. Only Maharashtra, with 1,399 cases, had higher number of stalking incidents. No other city came anywhere close.”
Since 2013, when the offence of stalking was introduced in the Criminal Amendment Act, the number of FIRs being filed has been rising. Though the NCRB?did not report data for Section 354(D) of the Indian Penal Code in 2013, it said 346 FIRs were pending investigation by cops in the beginning of 2014. Thereafter, 4,699 stalking cases were registered that year, and 6,266 FIRs were registered in 2015.
“Most women hesitate to come forward. To avoid a stalker, they change their route of travel or even change jobs,” says advocate Amrita Beura. “The targets are picked precisely because of their vulnerability. The accused, in most cases, knows whether the victim is a local or not. If you are living all alone, or you don’t have roots in the community, you are an easy target as these factors are protective buffers.
“Most victims know their stalkers. In most cases what happens is after a relationship ends the man refuses to move on or the accused is someone the victim can identify but doesn’t necessarily know well,” she adds.
The city-based advocate shares some precautionary tips. “The first thing one should do is to inform their family members about the incident. And next they record or make a station directory entry of all the happenings at the nearby police station so that the police are informed. If something happens after that they can register a case against the accused,” adds Beura.
