Actress Assaulted For Wearing Sportswear To A Park In Bangalore, Twitter Outraged

You would think that at least people living in the metropolitan cities of our country would be progressive enough to make public places safer for women. But even in 2020, that’s isn’t the case.

Samyuktha Hegde, an actress who has worked in South-Indian films, was recently assaulted by a woman in Bangalore and harassed by the male locals for wearing sportswear and working out in a park.

According to a report by The Indian Express, Samyuktha was with three other friends at Agara Lake and were practising hula-hooping. It was then when they were “attacked” by an elderly woman.

“It so happened that we were three girls working out and doing hula-hoops when an elderly woman came and attacked us. She said we are doing cabaret dancing and even hit one of my friends,” she said.

Image source

She claimed that the woman accused her and her friends of “indecent behaviour” and “stripping in the public”.  She took to Instagram to post videos of the incident which captures the accused woman attacking one of them.

“People in the park who knew her started supporting her and playing moral police and asking us if it is our culture to wear sportswear,” Samyuktha wrote.

She also alleged a man threatened to defame them while the police just stood and watched.

“In my line of work even false news is enough to destroy my career and he threatened me exactly of that and the police stood there and just watched,” she wrote.

Have a look at the videos and read her full post here:

View this post on Instagram

Video 1 and 2, you can see the lady clearly (kavitha reddy) charging at my friend and attempting to hit her Video 3: after she tried to assault my friend, when we were waiting for the police to arrive some People in the park who knew her started supporting her and playing moral police and asking us if it is our culture to wear sports wear Video 4: this man in the red checkered shirt and about 10 men with her arrived right before the police did and started threatening us. His name is Anil, and you can clearly hear him threatening me. In my line of work even false news is enough to destroy my career and he threatened me exactly of that and the police stood there and just watched. This is when i decided to go live and have our side of the story put out there in the open After being in a democracy and following all the norms of social distancing, we were abused and ridiculed by Kavitha Reddy and the mob in Agara Lake for practicing our hoolahoop while wearing sportswear. Despite being polite and trying to solve the problem, the lady hit my friend and used disparaging remarks about me and my friends Was extremely disappointed with how the police who came to the location behaved , like nothing was wrong and spoke to her with respect while asked us to be quite. The cops stood there while her mob harassed us and even after requesting the police continuously, they decided to stand there and support this (proof on igtv) Yesterday was really hard and it was so disturbing to go through this When we went to the police station, everyone there already knew her and spoke to her nicely and saw us like we were wrong. The only police who spoke to us with some respect and told her she was wrong was the inspector is the hsr police station muni reddy, he asked us both to file our respective complaints and he left. We wrote the complaint and gave it to the police. The police present there refused to give us an acknowledgement for the same. Its not easy being strong around people who are trying to break you, and having to listen to so many people harass us for doing nothing. THIS IS JUST WRONG I request you all for your support 💛 @blrcitypolice #thisiswrong #punishkavithareddy

A post shared by Samyuktha Hegde (@samyuktha_hegde) on

As her post went viral, massive outrage broke out on social media and people online lent their support to her. Many called the incident “unacceptable” and “terrifying” for women.

It is absolutely unacceptable to slut-shame and moral-police women based on what they choose to wear, even more so to assault her for it. What hope do we have for women’s safety in our country when fellow women behave this way?

It’s not the clothes that need changing. It’s the mindset of people.

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