Muslim village panchayat's solution for crimes against women: No mobiles, jeans for girls

A Muslim village council has issued an order banning girls from using mobile phones and wearing jeans and t-shirts, ANI reported on Sunday.

The ban is reported to have been issued in more than 10 villages in the districts of Muzaffarpur and Saharanpur.

“We live in villages… it (using mobile phones and dressing in jeans and t-shirts) might be allowed in cities but it is not allowed in villages,” the president of the council has been quoted as saying. The report has also quoted some villagers as saying that the decision was taken because crimes against women were seen to be increasing.

A report in The Times of India  quotes a community elder saying that mobile phones are the ‘root cause of all evils’ and that youngsters appeared to be glued to them day and night. The man is reported to have said that the decision was taken to ‘save daughters from the evil eye’. According to the report, the village council has even formed a committee to ensure that girls do not violate the ban.

A similar diktat had been issued last month, when a panchayat belonging to the Gujjar community banned mobile phones and jeans for girls, claiming that they were having a bad effect on them, PTI reported. The panchayat had then said that incidents of ’eve-teasing’ had increased due to ‘objectionable’ clothes worn by girls.

This comes even as the Supreme Court is hearing a petition on a case in which a khap panchayat ordered a 23-year old woman to be raped and paraded naked as a punishment for her brother’s elopement with an upper-caste girl. The woman has said that she had to flee her village because of atrocities against her, according to a report in The Hindu .