Trust, but verify

 

 

Maya was a sprightly teenager in love with love. Her boyfriend, Rakesh, meant the world to her. She often lied to her parents, even fought with them, to be with the man of her dreams. But a nightmare awaited her. She had no idea that the boy she trusted so blindly was using his mobile phone to record every moment of intimacy that she shared with him. Rakesh threatened to make the MMS clips public if she did not agree to satiate the lust of his fiendish friends as well. Maya was trapped. And before she knew what had hit her, the embarrassing clips were out in the market. Her world came crashing down.

Numerous tales of horror similar to Maya’s have been hitting the headlines in India with alarming regularity in recent months. The story is virtually the same everywhere, in big cities and small towns, in Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Cuttack and Alapuzzha, Kerala. Sexual predators masquerading as lover boys take advantage of fast developing technological means and a growing permissiveness among the urban teen crowd to trap girls in their web of deceit, sexual exploitation and blackmail.

On the face of it, being a teenager in new-millennium India is exciting indeed. There is freedom to mingle. There are countless opportunities for boys and girls to give free rein to their inner urges. And there is the pleasure of living life to the hilt. But the flip side of this ostensibly rosy scenario is that it is fraught with grave danger. Youthful liberty can often lead to fatal follies, as it tragically did in the cases of Cuttack’s Asima Mohanty and, as recently as last Saturday, a high school girl in Thane, who was lured by four boys to a secluded spot near a movie theatre and brutally gang-raped .

A promising student of journalism and mass communication, Asima was driven to suicide by her boyfriend, who sold pictures and MMS clips of their intimate encounters for a fast buck. Asima’s fault was that she not only fell in love with the wrong guy, she also trusted him completely. Gullibility was her bane. By the time she realised that the man she had surrendered herself to was actually a pimp, it was far too late. For him, betraying the trust of a woman and making and circulating a pornographic CD featuring her was all in a day’s work. For Asima, it was the last straw. She preferred death to living with infamy.

Last Saturday's incident in Nalla Sopara in Maharashtra's Thane district also ended in the 15-year-old girl's suicide. Four local youngsters took her out on the eve of World Friendship Day and raped her repeatedly. The grievously injured girl dragged herself home the next morning and used a nylon rope to end her life.

The first MMS scandal to erupt in India was the one involving a girl student of Delhi Public School. Since then, sexually explicit clips, circulated through mobile phones and the Internet, have proliferated across the country. Who is to blame for this reprehensible phenomenon? Both parents and behavioural counsellors feel that girls need to exercise greater caution. “Clips mania is spreading dangerously among the younger generation,” says Ahmedabad-based psychiatrist Dr. Hansal Bhachech. “With perverts on the prowl everywhere, girls need to keep a check on who they their friends are.” “Girls are more vulnerable today than ever before because of their casual attitude towards sex,” says Prof. Rabindra Kumar Dash, retired principal of a government college in Orissa. “As the father of a young college-going girl, I hold the victim responsible. In a modern society, every girl has the right to choose her life partner. But when in love, they should avoid indulging in any kind of sexual activity. This openness makes them easy prey.”

A girl in Mehsana district of Gujarat, Namrata (name changed), a victim of rape and blackmail, would have valid reasons to disagree with that assertion. In her complaint registered with the local police, she has alleged that a man, Vishnu Chaudhary from Rupaal village of the same district, proposed to her and a few days later lured her to a hotel room. There, he forced himself on her and recorded the act on his mobile. Tired of his blackmailing, Namrata complained to her parents about the incident and filed an FIR with the police. An upset Vishnu settled scores by circulating the MMS clip in the market.

As a result of parental and societal conditioning in her formative years, the average girl in India tends to be too trusting of the man she loves. Once she is in a relationship, she gives in to every demand that the lover makes. While it gives her a sense of freedom – she feels that she is doing what she is doing of her own sweet will – she is often actually at the mercy of an exploitative man who perceives a woman as no more than a sex object.

Take the case a 19-year-old Mumbai college girl who was raped first by her boyfriend, Parag Mhatre, and then by a bunch of his friends. Parag had befriended the Bhayander girl about seven months before the incident. He would wait for hours outside her college and shower a lot of attention on her whenever he met her. He introduced himself as Ritesh Patil and she fell in love with him. One day she accompanied Parag to a hotel where she was forced to have sex with him and his friends. Parag also filmed the act on his mobile phone and threatened to make the MMS clips public if she dared to complain to anybody about the incident.

He then passed on the MMS clips to his brother, Pankaj Mhatre. A few days later, Pankaj also blackmailed her and asked her to visit the same hotel. Afraid that the clips would be circulated among her college mates, she went to the hotel, where she was raped by Pankaj and a friend of his. The victim was initially scared to disclose the incident but then mustered the courage to do so. She spoke to her parents and made a clean breast of what had happened to her. The family lodged a formal complaint with the Mira Road police station. Dr. Paras Shah, a renowned sexologist, feels that girls these days fall into a trap all too easily. “Creating and circulating MMS clips is the latest example of misuse of technology. Money is not the sole reason why some boys create these clips. It’s often a result of mutual understanding. Girls sometimes repose too much unquestioning faith in their boyfriends.”

Soon after Asima Mohanty's tragic suicide, another similar incident took place in Niali village of Cuttack district on October 15, 2008. The victim, Amina (name changed), an intermediate student of Adaspur College, fell in love with a boy named Shekh Abdul from Kalapanchana village, near Nimapara.

Abdul shot their private and intimate moments with his mobile phone camera and later sold the CD, titled 'NialiXXX', in the market. Unlike Asima, Amina has chosen to face the consequences with courage. But not everybody is Amina.

Three higher secondary girl students committed suicide in their classroom in Ambalappuzha, Alappuzha district, Kerala, early this year. They had recorded in their diaries the relationships that they had with some boys of the same school. The post mortem suggested that the girls were in a physical relationship with the boys. Now, based on the diary notes, the police have arrested the boys and investigations are on. These girls hailed from lower middle class families. It was alleged that the boys had recorded their sexual encounters with the girls on mobile phone cameras. Later, they used the clips to blackmail them. This unsavoury incident has sent shock waves through the state. Parents are worried for their daughters.

Many feel that much of the blame lies with parents. “First and foremost, parents should treat their teenage children as friends so that they feel free to share their secrets and feelings, with them” says Bangalore’s Usha Kumari S., whose daughter is studying to be a journalist. “More than a father, a mother should be constantly in touch with the child.”

But Usha does have concerns about what young people are increasingly exposed to these days. “I do feel a bit tensed. Exposure to multimedia outlets, the friends with whom they hang out, orkut, facebook, everything adds more fuel to the worry. It is very important to keep an eye on their friends too,” she says.

Ahmedabad’s Bijal Joshi paid a heavy price for failing to size up her boyfriend in good time. She wasn’t aware that Sajal Jain, her boyfriend, was a married man and untrustworthy. She went out for a New Year-eve bash with him on December 31, 2003, unmindful of what the party had in store for her. Sajal took Bijal to a hotel in the Shahibaug Area of Ahmedabad, where some of his friends were waiting for them. The hapless girl was gangraped, burnt with cigarette butts and mercilessly beaten up. A week later, on January 7, 2004, Bijal committed suicide as she thought that the police were shielding the accused.

Dr. B.N. Gangadhar, head of psychiatry, NIMHANS, Bangalore, believes that it is the parents's responsibility to keep an eye on their children. “Teenage is a period where transition from dependent childhood to independent adulthood occurs. It’s a phase of crucial physical and psychological change. Parents may not be able to grasp the complexities a teenager undergoes. They might not even know when to allow their teenage child to be independent. That is how friction between parents and children usually erupts,” he says.

Dr. Gangadhar adds: “It is important for parents to keep an eye on their children as well as their friends, observe with whom they are talking and make them understand the consequences of every step that they contemplate.” Obviously, many urban parents are allowing their teenage children a long rope with disastrous consequences. Rituparna Mohanty, renowned social activist, blames the new era of economic globalisation for this turn of events. “Girls these days are treated like commodities in our male dominated society. They are used and exploited. Therefore, it is important that they are more careful about choosing friends and think a hundred times before taking any step.”

Indeed, much has changed since the time today’s parents and teachers were young, but many of them question whether it is the standards that have changed, or the adults themselves. Mrs Kiran Mehta, retired school teacher and counsellor at the Delhi Public School, says: "I think relationships today are not all that different. Adults and teachers may have a different perspective because they forget what things were when they were young."

It would be wrong, says Mrs Mehta, to berate today's youngsters for the ills of society at large "Today's kids may look and act different, but even in earlier decades young girls used to fall into such traps, pictures were shot blackmailed resorted to. Only, such incidents are more openly talked about in the media these days.”

Mehta continues: "You can't put a bunch of boys and girls together and expect hormones and emotions not to clash. Such incidents are inevitable in our times. It is best if a teenager learns to talk to someone as soon as a problem begins to brew.” Unfortunately, realisation often dawns only after too much darkness has enveloped a tormented young mind. The way out can never be easy.