—a Thoughtfox editorial—

Earlier last week Thoughtfox came across a social media post by one Surabhi Bhura, who works for a large corporation in Jaipur, Rajasthan. In that April 22 post, Bhura recalled a peculiar daytime attack that a random male motorcyclist had launched at her in March in a street of the Vaishali Nagar locality in Jaipur. As she was walking through a street behind the Vaibhav Complex shopping mall at around 10.30 AM on March 7, this man—whom she had noticed had been sitting on his motorcycle by the side of the street, up ahead—“revved his bike” and, “riding past” her, spat gutka on her face. (Gutka is a chewable tobacco mix that includes crushed betel nut and other spices.)

Key facts

• In the Vaishali Nagar area of Jaipur, Rajasthan, a male motorcyclist attacks random female pedestrians by spitting gutka on their faces.

• Surabhi Bhura was attacked on March 7, 2020; but she came to know of 4 more women within her vicinity who had been attacked the same way in the same locality but did not report the attack to the police.

• Bhura’s further investigation revealed that these attacks had been going on for 3 months prior; and over 50 women had been attacked in the area.

• Bhura’s attacker was riding a Splendour Plus; he has a lean physique; at the time of the attack, he had neck-length hair. The attacker’s Splendour Plus had the following last three digits on its number plate:  837.

After considerable effort, and with some help from a good samaritan—whose wife had herself been victimised the same way presumably by the same motorcyclist—Bhura was able to register a complaint with the police regarding her attack. However, Bhura had to personally pursue any clues to the attacker’s identity—which still remains unknown. (For our interview with Bhura, click here.)

Bhura believes that the attacker’s identity could yet be ascertained by the police based upon the limited clues that she and her associates were able to find. One of the key things that Bhura discovered was that this was not the first or even the second such attack that this man had perpetrated against random women in the local streets. Similar complaints had previously been registered with the same locality’s police establishment—and Bhura’s survey of local video footages corresponding to those complaints’ timeline appeared to show the same attacker in action. Nevertheless, there is no indication yet that the police has ever tried to identify—leave aside punish—this attacker.

Although this deranged, hateful man’s attacks are clearly misogynist—as they are directed only against women—they are also generally dangerous from a medical viewpoint in these times of the pandemic as they involve spitting. At any rate, nobody should be coercively spat upon—and the Vaishali Nagar police won’t be able to ensure that unless it finds this particular spitter. All in all, Thoughtfox considered this issue serious enough to reach out to Bhura—to help us better understand the nature of this attack on her, and—to support her through her continuing quest for justice in this regard.

One of the details that came to light from our interview with Bhura was that the police was reluctant to register a complaint about this attack because it claimed that it could not figure out how to classify it legally as a crime within the given rubric of India’s laws regarding crimes against women. Thoughtfox is at pains to point out that, inasmuch as this attacker and his attacks target only women, intentionally spitting at somebody non-consensually is anyway a form of criminal battery under India’s tort law.

But if the police prosecutor is still unpersuaded somehow, then all he or she needs to ask himself or herself is this: What legally sanctioned action would I take if a person intentionally spits on me when I am not in uniform, nor on duty, and I have not consented to being spat upon? What legally sanctioned action would I additionally take if the same person repeats this action over and over again with other members of my police department when they are out and about in their civilian clothes—and are not on duty? Sure we know what a police official—be he on duty or not—normally does in India when he perceives so much as the slightest of an insult to him in the street: rough up the perceived offender (be it legally sanctioned or not)! Nevertheless, we realize that the police won’t want ordinary citizens to start beating up one another as a legal recourse to anything; and if not, then what?

In point of fact, what this attacker has been doing already makes him a habitual offender—of a criminal battery; additionally, there is a misogynistic dimension to his attacks, which are intended to humiliate women; and on top of that, he has been a health hazard owing to the nature of his attacks—and not only because of the hidden prospect of COVID-19 (which simply makes him potentially lethal). All public spitting is a health hazard; spitting onto somebody face is particularly so: The pandemic just makes it potentially lethal.

Now, even if there is a slight chance that it is not one offender—but that there are different offenders that have been active within the Vaishali Nagar locality—the offence remains the same, and so do its attributes. In a sense, the local police might have more to answer for if its area is infested with several men that spit on women’s faces. But whether there is a serial spitter or a clutch of spitters of gutka on women’s faces in Vaishali Nagar, it is a disgraceful menace that needs to be addressed with dispatch.

We, of course, trust Bhura’s assessment of the collected evidence—pointing to a serial attacker; but it would be up to the local police and courts to verify all that—based, in part, upon video forensics and local testimonies regarding similar attacks. Thoughtfox thus asks both the Jaipur police and residents to unite in identifying this attacker at the earliest—and in bringing him to book. We hope that our interview with Bhura will assist our readers in grasping the abhorrent reality of these attacks.

Reference: Rai, Diva (October 4, 2019) “Battery as a tort and its remedies” iPleaders (Downloaded from the following URL on June 7, 2020: https://blog.ipleaders.in/battery-as-a-tort-and-remedies/#:~:text=It%20is%20not%20necessary%20that,also%20considered%20as%20a%20battery )