Women complain of sexual harassment at Open Street Festival during Dussehra festivities in Karnataka's Mysuru

Mysuru: An event during the ongoing Dussehra festivities turned into a nightmare for several women who complained of being stalked, sexually harassed and molested. Several women took to social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to share their experiences during an event of the ‘Open Street Festival’ held at the Krishnaraja Boulevard. The incidents reportedly occurred on Monday when a large crowd, consisting of locals and tourists, gathered to witness the cultural events organised as part of the street festival. “It was very disgusting and very irritating. Some boys came drunk and they were coming near us and falling on us. One girl raised her voice to send that group out but our Mysuru boys are really unfit. They didn’t even support that girl. It’s very shameful, very shameful #MeToo,” a woman tweeted. [caption id=“attachment_5394291” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. PTI[/caption] “People take advantage to grope, touch and nudge others. They say sorry and know they can’t be blamed,” another woman said in a Twitter post. One woman claimed that foreign tourists who had arrived to witness the festivities were not spared either. She alleged that some men passed lewd remarks at them. “I was with two foreign nationals and I’m so thankful they couldn’t understand what was being said to us. They (men) assumed that I don’t understand Kannada,” she said. When contacted, Mysuru Police Commissioner A Subramanyeswara Rao told PTI that they have not received any formal complaint. Police were scrutinising footage obtained from CCTV cameras in the area, he said. “We are looking for some specific information and are going through the CCTV videos. So far we have not come across (any such incident) from the footage we have. We need confirmation on that,” he said, adding that police were trying to identify the victims. “So far, we haven’t got any specific information except for four tweets saying they were molested or harassed. They (the women) just went home and put up a tweet. We are still taking it seriously and trying to identify those people (molesters),” Rao said. The Mysuru incident comes as a grim reminder of the New Year revelry in Bengaluru last year that turned into a nightmare for several women who were allegedly molested despite huge police presence at a large gathering in the city’s downtown region, drawing widespread outrage.