Luckily, again, the police did take action — after some initial, uh, hesitation — and nabbed the perverts within sixty hours. More gratifyingly, Police Commissioner D.N. Jhadhav atoned for calling the incident “a mountain made out of a molehill” by vowing to launch an Anti Molestation Campaign on the lines of his famous Anti-Drunk Driving Campaign, which has recently made him something of a press hero. Meanwhile Home Minister R.R. Patil has promised to conduct a fast track trial and appeal against bail to the accused.

Media activism? It’s a tempting proposition, except for one tiny oversight: on New Year’s Eve, just hours after the Juhu nightclub attack, a minor girl in Latur, Maharashtra, was found hanging dead from a tree. She had been raped and murdered by four local youths. Interestingly, this ‘incident’, was reported in Mumbai nearly a week later, then politically muffled and appropriately relegated to page seven — while the Juhu scandal continued to hog the headlines. Presumably, it was not ‘outrageous’ enough.

Why? Now this may sound facetious, but my guess is, because Latur is not, well, Juhu. And because thirteen-year-old Taslima was no NRI from Texas.

To put it bluntly, by selectively exposing how women are exploited, the media and civil society are doing precisely the same. And, all too often, the line between quixotic agitation and gratuitous titillation is getting thin, too thin. It makes us wonder if the real story behind the Juhu nightclub fracas is about fighting crimes against women, or about grabbing eyeballs. Now that is definitely something we women can do without.

... contd.