India launches anti-Romeo squads

International Desk: Standing near colleges, shops or other public places in Uttar Pradesh may now land young men in trouble. On new Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's orders, police teams working as "anti-Romeo squads" have started patrolling near schools, colleges and malls and surprise checks are also on their agenda.

Three men were arrested yesterday in Lucknow and a group of boys was forced to do sit-ups by the police in Jhansi. In Meerut, teens were hauled up outside girls' schools and colleges and questioned.

"The idea is to reclaim public spaces and make them safe for women," said Uttar Pradesh police chief Javeed Ahmed, who was told by Yogi Adityanath on Monday to come up with a plan to improve law and order, in tandem with the poll promises of the BJP, which swept the UP election with an enormous haul of 315 of the state's 403 seats.

Instructions have gone to police stations that public spaces including malls, colleges and coaching centres "need to be made safe", especially for young girls. It is not clear, however, whether the orders are precise on where to draw the line before policing becomes harassment.

"In a bid to check incidents of harassment and passing of comments on them (women and girls), 'anti-Romeo dal' will be constituted at the police station levels and action under Goonda Act will be taken against wrongdoers," said senior police officer A Satish Ganesh.

Anti-Romeo squads, a key promise in the BJP's "sankalp patra" or manifesto for Uttar Pradesh, have been a controversial subject with some linking them to the raucous campaign against "love jihad", the term used by Yogi Adityanath and other BJP leaders to describe Muslim men marrying Hindu women.

Adityanath, a 44-year-old priest-politician, had said during his campaign that "love jihad" was an important poll issue for the BJP.

BJP chief Amit Shah said the squads would prevent "harassment of young women students". But one of the party's own leaders, Sunil Bharala, interpreted it differently, telling NDTV last month that action would be taken in cases of "love jihad that targets innocent girls".

Source: Agencies

risingbd/Dhaka/Mar 22, 2017/A K Azad