Karnataka picture controversy: It’s perverse, it’s atrocious, it’s like... it’s like, we are Uttar Pradesh!

There isn’t a court on earth that will have any problem with this. But somehow in the cacophony that has erupted over Clickgate, the question is, will there be a punishment to fit the crime.
And the crime is that’s hardly of any import anymore, now is it? All forgotten. But let’s revisit it for just a moment, shall we?

A man is caught, allegedly taking a picture of a woman’s bosom, not her face on his cellphone. She is fully clad, and even if she wasn’t, nobody has the right to take her photograph. Either fully or in parts!

Yet, this man did. And instead of the focus being on punishing the man for his impertinence, the fact that a woman and a complete stranger, was the target of such impropriety is lost in the din and the dust of charges and counter-charges that are being thrown about.

A former air force officer who saw the altercation, the young woman who was photographed objected strongly to being clicked caught hold of him and thrashed our clickgater as he tried to run out of the coffee shop on Cunningham Road.

As he ran, the perv kept saying, “Do you know who I am.”!!!! A comment, one would have thought that would be more appropriate in the corridors of power–mad capital Delhi than in soft-spoken, urbane Bengaluru.

But yes, we do know who you are. Someone, who took a young woman’s picture without her permission. At 10.45 am in the morning! Some libido. Some insolence. I could go on, the rush of abuse, the invective hovers at the very tip of my tongue. But one must desist. Decency and morality require one to think before one speaks, pause before one tears someone else apart, however ill-mannered he or she maybe.

The victim, a female journalist, born with a disability, wants none of this to be made public. She wants her identity to be kept secret. All she asks for is an apology from the said snoop, and she will let the matter lie. But this is where the entire world and its aunt have fallen prey to the masterly manipulation of the medium and the
message.

Overnight, it’s no longer about the fact that a peeping Tom photographed a young woman without her permission. Outraged, she had kicked up a fuss, and it was just coincidence that a passing Hoysala stopped, and dragged the said man, being beaten to a pulp by a concerned citizen on the street at the time, off to the clink.

Suddenly, it’s about caste and colour and creed, and discrimination between one service and another, between an upright cop and colleagues who have a vested interest in destroying his chances to be a DG or IG, or whatever the coveted nomenclature is.

Oooh! Yes! How could I forget to bring that up. The man who had taken the pictures of the young woman’s cleavage is a policeman! Someone tasked to uphold the law, to keep us women safe

from guys who cross that line, and prevent something, exactly like this from happening! And yes, 500 of the 15,000 policemen who work with this fine upstanding citizen in the Karnataka
State Reserve Police force, rioted on Wednesday, dragging buses that we taxpayers have paid for, and laying them across the road to block and disrupt traffic as weary office-goers were heading home after a tough day.

It went on for four to five hours. Sarjapur Road was completely cut off as the 500 men all in mufti, they would have lost their jobs if they were in uniform vandalised traffic signs and broke every rule in the book in defense of their chief, an officer and a gentleman whom they believed was being framed!

So let’s see what the KSRP chief’s supporters grouse is, and the case that he has tried to build as he goes from one television station to another, and from one top policeman’s office to another.
The young woman didn’t file the complaint immediately. She waited for 24 hours before she filed a complaint. That’s your problem? Well that’s because, several right-thinking policemen were pleading with our cellphone photographist to apologise and move on. He didn’t.

Two, there is a big question mark over the Hoysala. How did it appear out of nowhere, when the victim hadn’t even complained? She didn’t have to. The Hoysala, connected to High Grounds police station was passing by, folks. No conspiracy there.
There’s more. The cellphone, our denizen used was dispatched from High Grounds police station to Cubbon Park police station, and the pictures of the young woman sent to three other policemen.
And why would that be the wrong thing to do? Said policeman, wants his phone back! That it is evidence in the case is immaterial. He wants his phone back. Or else.
And then there are of course the stories doing the rounds of how the KSRP chief has alleged that like our more famed Khobragade, he was stripped, and beaten, but not arrested. Even though he insisted he should be.

That his superior officers, colluded to bring these charges against him. That they wouldn’t even let him sit in their car because he was from a different caste.

All I can say is that in Modi’s India, mitron (Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s favourite opening salvo) there are large parts of the country where pubescent girls are raped and murdered on a whim, as in the case of the chilling double rape and murder in Badaun, where the police dismissively say to a distraught father – ‘Oh, you’ll find your daughters strung up on some tree.’
And even a UP chief minister, educated in a wonderful city like Mysore, tells reporters, ‘What are you complaining about, you’re safe aren’t you?”

If our Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and our home minister don’t get Clickgate behind them and bring the full force of the law against this errant top cop, Karnataka, is in real danger of becoming the benighted Uttar Pradesh of the south.

What are they waiting for?
I’ll leave you with this line from Immanuel Kant that I spotted in a review of David Caute’s book Isaac and Isaiah, “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”
No, not even our policemen.