Beti parhao is a national slogan and a mission but how the girls should go to school if they are eve-teased, harassed and molested by the village ruffians?
This is what happening in Bihar. First there was report about boys physically attacking and beating the girls by storming in their campus and hostel of Kasturba Gandhi residential school in a village in Supaul district a few days back and now equally serious incident of attack on girls, following attempts to sexually harass them, going to high school.
As a result the girls of Ekparha village under Simri Bakhtiarpur police station in Saharsa, the district neighbouring Supaul, have dropped out of school. After an incident on last Thursday, the guardians of the girls, who are students of class X and XII, decided that they should not go to school. The helpless girls, numbering about 38, have urged Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to intervene and help them out.
On that day when the girls in group on bicycle were going to upgraded high school, 7 km away from their village, some miscreants stopped them in bid to sexually harass them. When this was happening, two boys of the same village, one of them younger brother of one of the victims, saw and resisted the ruffians who attacked the two and left one of them with fractured arm.
An indifferent local administration showed little interest when the parents of the girls went to file case. The administration swung into action when some TV channels crew reached the village and inquired about the incident.
The sub-divisional police officer of Simri Bakhtiarpur Mridula Kumari said an FIR has been registered and police team was conducting raids to nab the culprits. But on the other hand the guardians of the accused youths resisted the police action. Kumari said police would be deployed on the route to the inter college situated in another village. There is no high school in Ekparha village and the girls keen to continue their higher studies pedal to a high school in neighbouring village which is 7 km away from their village.
The girls told some visiting reporters that they were being harassed for over one year but they did not tell their guardians fearing they would be not allowed to continue their education. But when they found it was enough and when the ruffians started attacking their brothers the incident was known to all.
One of the girls was quoted as saying that they were undergoing this ordeal for a long time. “They would hurl abuses, pass on lewd comments and sing obscene Bhojpuri songs when we pass through the way. It was very depressing,” she said. Mother of one of the girls said, “We have stopped the girls from going to school. No one stops the miscreants. What we will do if something worse happens to our daughters.”
Saharsa SP Rakesh Kumar said the accused have been identified and the police have intensified efforts to arrest all the accused.
Meanwhile, the National Human Right Commission issued a notice to the Bihar Government over beating of 34 girl students of Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya by the miscreants in Supaul. The Commission took suo motto cognisance of the media reports.