Apurba Jiban Baruah, SSP (city)

July 11: A day after a girl was molested on GS Road, city SSP Apurba Jiban Baruah came up with a solution that was, at the very least, difficult to fathom: “Merely deploying police personnel in front of bars will not stop such incidents, parents should also keep an eye on their children.”

Would Guwahati police please answer these questions? What if a senior couple were stepping out of a nightclub? What about fights breaking out in front of nightclubs? So, do young people now need to take their parents along to get a drink at a bar? Will that help? Are young people breaking the law by having a drink at a bar? If they aren’t, shouldn’t the law protect them? Is going to a bar a crime? Aren’t these bars legal, licenced set-ups that deserve legal protection?

Visuals aired on a local television channel, which captured the incident, show how the bunch of hooligans sprang upon the girl like a bunch of wolves as she came out of a bar after celebrating a birthday party.

“There is no restriction on a girl going to a bar. Guwahati is a growing city. And a city needs to fulfil some parameters. There is a pub in London where people can go and drink throughout the night. I have seen such bars in Thailand too where men and women go and drink but nobody bothers about it. People in Thailand have accepted it. They do not have a problem with it,” said Baruah.

“It is the responsibility of the excise department to decide who gets permission to open a bar,” he said. The police are responsible for maintaining law and order and police cars patrol the city to keep an eye on all public places. But it is not possible to deploy police just in front of bars, he added.

Baruah said people here should also learn and accept the changes that have come along with time. “Earlier, people used to go to Belle Vue and drink at night but it did not create any problem,” he said.

Baruah said parents do not have control over the new generation and that the upbringing of children should be such that they can learn to behave properly.

He also said schools and society have a role in this regard.

“As incidents of girls going to a bar is new in the city, people are yet to accept them with a free mind. But they should accept the changes. Only police cannot control everything,” Baruah said.

Some questions though: Parents have a job, but aren’t the police supposed to have one too and protect citizens who are getting beaten up and molested on the streets? Aren’t the police shirking responsibility by saying what they are saying? Are the citizens of Guwahati asking for too much by asking for more police personnel on the streets? Isn’t policing meant to be a deterrent for criminals? Finally, what happens till Guwahati “accepts” its bar culture? Do women going to bars get molested till then?