The two sisters in Rohtak on Monday. ( Source: Express photo by : Gajendra Yadav)
Written by Sumegha Gulati | Kharkhauda | Posted: December 2, 2014 4:13 am | Updated: December 2, 2014 10:57 am
As a TV reporter — the seventh since morning — approached the Rohtak sisters for an interview, the younger one signalled him to stop. The duo then took a quick break to gulp down some water. In a corner, their brother-in-law held a list of time slots allotted to the news channels that had reached their house in Kharkhauda on Monday after a video of the two thrashing their alleged harassers aboard a Haryana Roadways bus went viral.
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ORbIJ6JYyxU
In Aasan village, 27km away, a deathly silence hung outside the house of Kuldeep, who was arrested late on Sunday along with the two other youth shown in the video. On the gate, his name was etched on black granite while on the walls nearby, brightly painted advertisements touted coaching classes for Army and Navy recruitment tests.
The two villages told two different stories – while the girls stated that they had been “physically assaulted” and “molested”, the accused countered that they were acting in “self-defence”.
In between was a twist: there is still no trace of a pregnant woman who allegedly took the video, and who the girls claimed they were speaking up for when the fight broke out, and another old woman who the accused said they were fighting for.
But first, this is what Aarti, 22, and Puja, 19, had to say.
ALSO READ: All girls should do what Rohtak sisters did: Uma
According to the two BCA students of IC Women’s Government College in Rohtak, 45 km away, they were waiting at the bus stop there, when two men — Mohit alias Monu and Kuldeep Singh — allegedly started eve-teasing them.
Aarti said that they threw chits of paper with mobile numbers scribbled on them towards the girls. “When we opposed, they started passing lewd comments. Our bus came at about 1 pm and we boarded it. The boys also hopped on,” she said. Then, after they sat down, Aarti claimed, the two started making fun of them, saying the girls were “not fit to sit on the seats” and should rather occupy the floor.
As a war of words ensued, Pooja said the boys called up a friend from their mobile – now identified as Deepak Hooda – who got onboard en-route, from Bahlot. “Now that there were three of them, and with nobody in the bus preventing them, the boys started making obscene gestures,” she said.
The girls alleged that the pregnant woman, who was the only one on the bus to object to the youths’ actions, was also harassed. “The boys told her, ‘Hum inko nahin chedenge toh tumhe chedenge (If we don’t tease them, we will tease you)’. We told the boys to leave the woman alone continued…
Categories: Asia, India, The Muslim Times