Six held after reports of groping attacks at New Year celebrations

At least six suspects have been detained days after outrage erupted over several women being groped and molested during New Year’s Eve celebrations in the southern Indian city of Bangalore.

Police in the city – the country’s information technology hub – first denied that any incident of sexual harassment had taken place during the latenight celebrations.

But yesterday, police officer Hemant Nimbalkar said at least six individuals were detained after several video clips of women being attacked by groups of men went viral on social media.

The incident highlights the persistent violence against women in India, in spite of tougher laws against sexual assault imposed after the December 2012 death of a young woman who was gangraped on a bus in New Delhi.

One senior state government minister said the New Year’s incidents took place because the women were acting like westerners, implying that their attire had provoked the attacks, a comment that provoked much criticism.

The police had earlier said that no-one had come forward to file a complaint about the incidents. But since then, at least one woman has come forward to speak of how she was molested on Saturday night.

Others have said that they saw women being molested or groped, and that revellers were making lewd remarks – even as the state government said that more than 1,500 police personnel had been deployed to control the crowds. The young woman who came forward, Chaitali Wasnick, told the NDTV news channel that she was heading home at around 1:30am when two men approached her, making her suspicious. “So I just moved aside, I let them pass,” she said, adding that one man began to grope her.

“I did not have any idea that he’d do that, so I went totally blank,” Ms Wasnick said, adding that no-one came to help her and that there were no police personnel to be seen where she was.

Meanwhile, Indian Olympian Krishna Poonia has described preventing a similar attack. The discus thrower said she was in Rajasthan’s Churu district on 1 January when she spotted three men trying to molest two teenage girls at a railway crossing.

“I chased and caught of one of them, and then helped the girls file a complaint,” she said.

Inspector Gopiram said Ms Poonia had brought the girl to his police station, adding that they had started an investigation into the case.

He said: “We always urge the public to be vigilant and report such incidents to the police.”

0 Indian police tried to manage crowds on New Year’s Eve