Hostel Girls

The report about 40 odd minor girls lodged in the Gujjar and Bakarwal hostel in Srinagar being subjected to sexploitation allegedly by the male staff deployed there could not have come at a more inopportune time. The girls in 12-13 year age group and enrolled with the Government Girls Higher Secondary School, Rajbagh, in 6th and 7th classes have recently been lodged in the facility being managed by Gujjar and Bakarwal Advisory Board of the state government’s Social Welfare Department. According to reports, the girls used to be generally melancholic at the school which prompted the staff to delve a bit deeper into it. Eventually, they broke down to narrate their woeful tales of harassment and sexploitation allegedly by the male staff. They were told to slip into their beds in undergarments and to keep the doors of their rooms open from inside. The staff allegedly molested them asking them not to disclose anything about it to anybody lest they would face dire consequences. Shocked at the revelations, the school authorities informed the deputy commissioner who lost no time to visit the institution to ascertain the first hand information about the murky goings-on in the hostel. He is reported to have assured early action in the matter. Because the government is yet to clear its position about the report, one really does not know what action has been taken these past days to ensure the safety of the highly vulnerable girls in the hostel. Given the lethargic responses of the functionaries in several of its outfits, even as the chief minister is at pains to lend some promptitude as part of introducing new work culture, the extremely sensitive matter might have lapsed into the easy-going bureaucratic procedures without any steps being taken at ground zero to save the girls.

Come as it does at a time when the troubled region is aghast at a disgraceful sexploitation scandal involving a galaxy of highprofile people, including sitting and former ministers, members of legislature, top bureaucrats, police and security forces officials and business-men, the Gujjar and Bakarwal hostel happenings assume a monstrous import, particularly because the facility is managed by a government outfit, the Gujjar & Bakarwal Advisory Board, whose head, Haji Buland Khan, would have us believe an enquiry was being held into the allegations. We are told the government does not have female wardens and other staff to man the facility where young girls have been lodged for their care and education. Because of this unconvincing reason, the Board has posted a male warden aided by male assistants at the hostel. Nothing could be more atrocious than having young male staff to look after scores of poor, albeit gullible, girls segregated from their families and parents, perhaps on the specious plea of bringing them out of their traditional backwardness. One could ask Khan, who happens to be one of the self-proclaimed representative of the poor folks, why couldn’t the Board find suitably qualified female staff for the hostel when the number of unemployed job seekers among women must be running in tens of thousands? In a socially and morally fragile system where even ministers and legislators are accused of having traded in young girls who could have been as good as their own daughters, and where various administration and police officials can turn into pimps, the posting of male staff to take care of female inmates of a government institution could be disastrous for all of them. In such a scenario, the possibility of the wardens degenerating into a similar role cannot be ruled out altogether. While in case of the sex scandal, the kingpin, Sabina, after all is a private individual who allegedly turned her home into a brothel, in the case of the hostel, it happens to be a government outfit which may have set the stage for undesirable purposes.

Unfortunately, the state government fails to draw its lessons from the bitter experiences it has aplenty. Instead of putting forth the silly excuse of female staff not being available to man the hostel, it could have shelved the idea, at least until suitable female staff could be deployed. Or else, some Anganwari workers available with Social Welfare Department in thousands, who are believed to be drawing their wages or salaries allegedly without doing any work, could have been posted, even as a temporary measure, at the hostel to take care of the girls. It is time the government, particularly the Board, came clean on the issue and also initiated urgent steps to ensure the safety of the hostel inmates. Taking cognizance of the girls’ allegations, the Board should immediately dismiss those accused of molestation after which they should also be arrested and handed an exemplary punishment, indeed, to send the right signal across all the government institutions where males and females work under the same roof. It goes without saying that the mere statement of the girls before the school authorities is sufficient to proceed against the wardens. As per Apex Court orders, no further evidence is required to substantiate the charge.

The article is an editorial from KO’s archives and was originally published on July 7, 2007