The fact that no one on a crowded platform attempted to help and that people boarded the train even as Swathi lay there bleeding, has raised serious questions about women’s safety in the city.
This article in The Tamil Hindu provides a detailed account of how the police arrested Ram Kumar almost a week after the murder.
According to the report, after the police received a tipoff from the security guard of A.S Mansion, they were able to trace Ram Kumar’s address and alert local police who entered the village in mufti and tracked his movements.
On the day before his capture, Ram Kumar was herding goats in the fields outside the village and went back home at the end of the day. Since the police suspected that he would escape, they waited until late in the night and surrounded the house.
On hearing a dog bark, Ram Kumar’s father saw the police and shouted. Ram Kumar tried to escape but on noticing that the house was surrounded, went back in. When the police broke down the door, they were shocked to find that he had slit his throat with a blade and was bleeding profusely. However since they had alerted the local hospital, he was immediately operated on by ENT experts and is not in danger.
Now that the killer has been apprehended, and facts will become clearer, there is a need to focus on the larger questions – the wild speculations, casting aspersions on “the girl’s character” and what “she may have done to provoke the attacker”, are telling of the larger, more crippling problem in society that can’t be solved with CCTV cameras. Social media has provided a platform for everyone to dispense advice and opinion.
Puthiya Thalaimurai channel interviewed women’s rights activists on the issue.
Many have rightly pointed that despite being educated and working, women are not free from expectations of a patriarchal society to conform to rigid norms of “discipline” and if a victim has failed to meet them, they are blamed for crimes committed against them.
Lakshmi Ramakrishnan, an actor and television personality puts it quite aptly - “a woman’s virtue is over-rated, glorified, that is the basic problem”
Tamil magazine, Nakheeran reported that the Ram Kumar, in his confession to the police, stated that he had known Swathi through a mutual friend and that he had proposed to her five times. “Since she rejected me all five times, I killed her in anger” is what Ram Kumar says.
According to this article by Soumya Natarajan, in the News Minute, Tamil cinema has made stalking an art. Summarising the plot of many-a popular tamil movies, she says “The hero is an aspirational figure, the go-getter who overcomes any number of obstacles to ‘win’ the girl. And many a time, the obstacle on his path is the girl herself who calls him a ‘porukki’ or tells him in no uncertain terms not to follow her around. By the end of the movie, however, all her nays magically turn into a coy yes and everyone goes home happy. True love has won, consent be damned.”
This article in The New Indian Express also quotes several experts, researchers and activists who have blamed warped notions of masculinity on crimes against women. B Jayashree, a social researcher, says that violence has been a definition of masculinity, whether in films or reality. “
Even in a recent movie with a ‘U’ rating, there was a gory scene of an arm being cut off. This culture of glorification of violence and desensitising people to the consequences of it has shaped the current mindset,” she rues.
It is also worth noting that in the five days between the killing and Ram Kumar’s arrest there were several attempts to also bring in communal and casteist colour to the issue.
Janata ka Reporter reported that Ramki, a BJP karyakarta tweeted a gruesome picture of the murdered victim with the caption “Dayling ISIS type beheading of a Hindu IT professional by a Muslim in Chennai.”Among his 11000 twitter followers is Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The tweet has not been removed, nor has any action been taken against this individual. Prominent film actor Y.G Mahendran also faced the wrath of many when he posted an outrageous theory on facebook that alleged there was subdued reaction to the killing as Swathi is a Brahmin girl.
News7, a tamil news website quoted the actor as saying that although he did not write the post, but had only shared it, he agreed with the views expressed in it. He said that PMK leaders like Amnbumani Ramadass and others did not protest the killing as strongly as they would have, if Swathi was from another caste.
The wild speculations both on Swathi’s conduct, the motive of the killer and the attempts of many to derail the issue had prompted a plea from Swathi’s uncle to refrain from rumour mongering, and instead focus on finding the killer.
Read more at:
http://www.sify.com/news/swathi-murder-notes-from-the-tamil-press-news-columns-qhekK0fgiadfe.html
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