Women at many places in Uttar Pradesh were forced to celebrate International Women’s Day in jail! UP has seen a spate of incidents of violence on women, with ruling BSP MLAs involved in several such incidents of rape, abduction and murder of women. Women from poor and oppressed communities in particular have been at the receiving end of these incidents. On 8 March this year, the UP Administration once again underlined its hostility to women’s assertion and demands for equality, by arresting women who had gathered to celebrate the International Women’s Day Centenary!
Women across the State were prevented and denied by the police from holding Women’s Day demonstrations under the pretext that Section 144 had been imposed across the state in view of the Samajwati Party’s state-wide agitation. Women pointed out that Women’s Day had nothing to do with the SP agitation but to no avail.
In Pilibhit, when AIPWA members, mainly poor agricultural women labourers gathered near the District Headquarters to hold a demonstration they were manhandled by the police. CPI(ML) leader Comrade Afroz Alam who came to argue out the matter with the police was beaten up. Many lawyers and Bar Council members who were on the premises came out and protested the action. But the police picked up Comrade Afroz, took him to the thana and beat him up brutally after tying his hands behind his back. All the while they jeered at Women’s Day, saying they would beat him so much that they would ‘turn him into a woman.’ Meanwhile the women including the elected Zila Panchayat member Rama Gairola were arrested and booked under IPC Sections 341, 342 and 353, and told that failure to pay bail of Rs 15000 each would mean jail.
In Deoria too, a large number of AIPWA activists including AIPWA State Secretary Premlata Pandey were arrested holding Women’s Day demonstration. At Lakhimpur Khiri, the AIPWA procession led by CPI(ML) CCM Krishna Adhikari and AIPWA State President Vidya Rajwar had to contend with the police for a long time before completing the march.
Earlier on 25 February, the CPI(ML) had held a large march to the Vidhan Sabha in Lucknow to protest against growing violence on women and the state government’s complicity with the perpetrators. AIPWA National Secretary Kavita Krishnan, Vice President Tahira Hasan, CPI(ML) State Secretary Sudhakar Yadav and CCM Krishna Adhikari were among the main speakers at the rally.
The IWD Centenary was observed by AIPWA all over the country. In Delhi women workers and students held a march and Public Meeting at Jantar Mantar (Parliament Street), where students also performed a street play. Working women including sanitation workers at a central TB Hospital and domestic workers as well as students from various universities in Delhi had addressed the March. Ironically on Women’s Day itself, a woman student of a DU college was shot dead, allegedly by a stalker, in broad daylight in a crowded locality, underlining how unsafe and unfriendly the national capital is for women. Women in Delhi are reluctant to complain of harassment to the police because of their routinely insensitive response.
Shockingly, the Delhi CM brushed off her responsibility for this incident by blaming ‘civil society’ for not coming to the girl’s aid! Less than 10 days later, however, when a DU woman teacher and AIPWA activist Uma Gupta faced harassment by a group of hooligans a few days before Holi, the police arrived half an hour late after her repeated calls, and then arrested those students and friends who had come to her aid! The hooligans had felt bold enough to make obscene gestures and threats to her even in the presence of the police, and the police chastised her for acting to protect herself. Only after determined assertion could an FIR be lodged and the miscreants arrested, though they were promptly released on bail. Even in the presence of the police, influential local people were given a free rein by the police to try and pressurise her into withdrawing her complaint. On 22 March, AISA and AIPWA joined a large number of students and teachers from various DU colleges and women's groups in a Protest March all over the DU North Campus, protesting the police attitude towards crimes on women.
