Two women harassed, groped on MG Road

Dirty looks, sleazy remarks, groping – the duo had to bear it all on their way home.

GURGAON: All Sanah and Ruchika (names changed to protect identity) wanted to do was have a good time after a gruelling day. So the two friends, both in their twenties, stopped by the bustling Mehrauli-Gurgaon road on Friday.

What followed was a nightmare they would remember their entire life with dread.

As visiting a pub would have burnt a hole in their pockets, Sanah and Ruchika decided to buy a bottle of liquor from a neighbourhood wine shop and head back to their apartment near the MG Road Metro station. “It was around 10-10.30 pm. The shopkeeper gave us what we asked for with an extremely sleazy look. Then he clearly told us what was on his mind,” Sanah, a Young India fellow, told Hindustan Times. Their ordeal had just begun.

As the two friends stayed nearby, they decided to walk back home. MG Road — a stretch lined by a dozen malls — was bustling with ice-cream vendors and auto drivers, among others. “But there were no women around. Not a single policeman was in sight either,” said Sanah.

Just then, somebody shouted: Kitna leti hain (How much do you charge)? The women responded by quickening their pace. Their tormenters, however, could not be ignored in this manner.

“Two men ran towards us. ‘How much do you charge?’ they asked. It was then that we decided to take an auto and get the hell out of there,” said Sanah, who has also shared an account of the harrowing episode on Facebook. “They first followed us till the auto, and then started groping us. Their hands were everywhere.”

Nobody, including the auto driver, came to their aid. “Even after we started off for home, the driver kept sniggering under his breath,” she added.

The experience left the two feeling shocked, angry and helpless. “They touched my breast. My friend was completely shattered,” an angry Sanah told HT. She, however, mustered the courage to file an FIR at the Sonepat police station on Monday night.

“We don’t leave our college campus most of the time. The incident occurred when we had gone to Gurgaon for two days. So we thought it best to file a complaint with the police,” the student said.

Sanah said she dialled the women’s helpline number a couple of times on Sunday but received no response. She then called 100, only to have the woman on the other side give her another number to dial. That didn’t work either.

Inspector Rishikant, SHO of the Sonepat police station, said Sanah filed the complaint around 8 pm on Monday. “We will send our team to the spot soon and launch a probe,” he said.

This incident comes a week after a video showing women beating up an alleged molester on MG Road went viral on social media. A fashion designer was molested at the Iffco Chowk Metro station while returning from work last Tuesday.