There is only one way to sum up the media assault that followed the molestation of two NRI women in Mumbai on New Year’s Eve: sleaze sells. And there is only one way to sum up how, as a female, it made me feel: used.

Don’t misunderstand, please. The pictures of the unsavoury incident were a masterstroke, exposing on camera, what is, for millions of women in this country, a quotidian crime. And the accompanying report on how the police refused to register it implicitly reminded us why it would remain one.

So far, so good.

Then all hell broke loose. By the next day, every newspaper and television channel had joined the romp, to protest against the ‘outrage’. Armies of ‘outraged’ female reporters marched into the streets to solicit support — and sound bites — from their suffering sisters. Others hounded the victims and their families who steadfastly refused to bite, except to admit that the attack had ‘shamed’ the honour of their clan. (That it also happened to be a shameful assault on a close relative was obviously not the point.)

By day three, the case had been publicly hijacked. While Bollywood starlets queued up to recount how they had been similarly violated, Halla Bol star

Ajay Devgan pleaded with the victims to ‘speak up’ and book the culprits — as he has so bravely done in his movie.

Alas, they did neither. But luckily Shiv Sena scion Udhav Thackeray was on hand to do the needful. “Those who committed this crime are migrants, outsiders,” he thundered ominously. “If the police refuse to take action, hand them over to us. We will blacken their faces and parade them around the city.”

... contd.