Thoughtfox interviews Jaipur's misogynist attack’s victim through her quest for justice
Last week, Thoughtfox reached out for an interview to Surabhi Bhura, who was attacked by an unknown male motorcyclist in Jaipur, Rajasthan earlier in March. Since that attack, Ms. Bhura has been trying to trace her attacker, who she claims has led similar attacks on a number of women within the same locality. Based upon her social media post regarding this attack; her photograph of herself following the attack; a video footage of a previous attack in the same locality presumably by the same man; and this interview, Thoughtfox has appealed to Jaipur’s police and public to find this man and bring him to justice. That appeal is made via an editorial that can be accessed here.
This interview was conducted in several sessions by Dr. Piyush Mathur on the Gmail chat platform through May 29-June 4, 2020. Owing to Ms. Bhura’s busy work schedule, the interview could not be conducted in a single session. The key facts gleaned from this interview—and which should help us in capturing the apparent perpetrator of these serial attacks on women in Jaipur—are displayed on the right side of the editorial.
Mathur: Ms. Bhura, on March 7, 2020 you were attacked by a male biker in Jaipur, Rajasthan. Is that correct?
Bhura: Yes. That is correct.
Mathur: What locality of Jaipur was that?
Bhura: This was in Vaishali Nagar—just behind the Vaibhav Complex shopping mall.
Mathur: What time did this attack occur?
Bhura: It was around 10:30 AM that the attack occurred.
Mathur: Could you please describe this whole episode—as short as it was—and the attack itself?
Bhura: Yes. Okay. So, I had gone out to buy some vegetables, hardly 100 metres from my house. And while coming back, a man stood around 50 metres away, waiting for something. As I came close, he revved up his bike, spat gutka on my face, neck and hair—and fled into the lane in the corner.
Mathur: So, gutka is this smokeless tobacco mix—which includes crushed betel nut and other spices—that is chewed. And this man had this mix in his mouth, and he spat it on your face. That sounds absolutely disgusting and unnerving. Had you seen this man before?
Bhura: No. In fact I hardly knew more than 4 people in Jaipur at that time. It had been around 15 days since I had shifted into Jaipur; and not more than 5 days that I had been in the locality.
Mathur: Right: You were new to this town; you had shifted there from Kolkata for work. In other words, there was no personal quarrel between you and this complete stranger of a man. And yet he attacked you. Subsequent to this attack, though, you tried to investigate this on your own. What steps did you take exactly?
Bhura: Yes. Absolutely, he was a complete stranger. The first thing I did was go to my landlady, since she had been living there for many years and I thought that people would help me better because they knew her.
She and I then went to the mall—i.e., the Vaibhav Complex—to find the CCTV footage. After a lot of persuasion, the Vaibhav Complex security let us see it. Turned out, the incident was not captured by their camera. So, we went to a neighbour, whose camera would have definitely captured the incident.
The first time I went there, she [this neighbour] just shooed me away, even after hearing about it from me. I kept knocking on her door; and then she said, “Our camera is not working; we can not help you,” etc. The next day onward her camera was made to face a wall.
After all this, we finally went to the police to file an FIR [First Information Report]—but all they could do was to accept a letter of request to them to find this man. That was because apparently what that attacker had done to me was not a crime that we could report: It was not offensive under any law.
I was almost sure they were not going to do anything. So, I started going and checking every CCTV camera in the neighbourhood to find footage so that I could get the attacker’s bike number. While doing this, I came to know of 4 other women in the vicinity who had gone through the same. So, we started backtracking to the dates when it had happened to them—so that we could find some details about him. But none of the cameras had recorded the number plate clearly.
After this, the next day a gentleman came to my house, looking for me. His wife had gone through the same [kind of an attack]. He also knew a lot of the police officers. So we finally got an FIR registered under his wife's name. In [order to file] this FIR, we had to mention that there was “eve-teasing” involved.
That was mostly it. And it took over 2 weeks.
Mathur: Do you remember the police station where you went to lodge this complaint?
Bhura: It was the Vaishali Nagar police station.
Mathur: But you won't happen to remember the officer who was in charge there at the time—when you tried to register your complaint?
Bhura: Frankly there was no one who was responding to us—except an officer named Rajkumar Singh. I requested him to increase patrolling in the area. And since that day, they have been patrolling there 3 times a day.
Mathur: In other words, when you reached the police station, you encountered a general atmosphere of indifference to your plight?
Bhura: Yes. In fact, later on we got to know that there were over 20 reports about the same incident with numerous women in front of a women’s college here. And they were also taken lightly.
Mathur: Exactly how did you come to know about these reports that had been taken lightly by the police? Were these reports formally registered by the police, who did nothing about them—or were you told by over 20 people that they had previously tried to register a similar complaint to the police presumably about the same man?
Bhura: So—as I mentioned earlier—there’s another gentleman who had been helping me through this. He is also well-acquainted with all the police officers in this particular branch. And he started seeing the old register of applications and complaints. There he found those complaints dating 3 months back. When he checked the footage of that time, the attacker looked pretty similar to the attacker in each of those footages. We cannot be completely sure if it was the same man involved in all those attacks, but it definitely seems that way by the look of the attacker.
Mathur: Are there any identifying features of the attacker and his motorcycle that you personally recall? I understand that we have a footage of another attack on a different woman presumably by the same man—and that the attack window was extremely brief—but it might help our readers and the authorities reading your interview if you could tell us anything in addition to what we see in this footage (which is included below in this interview).
Bhura: Yes, I do remember. He had a Splendour Plus: This I know vividly because I work in the motorcycle industry (so I could immediately guess). I remember he was lean, and had long hair: neck-length. That’s pretty much all I remember. He had a helmet on so I can’t say much about his face.
Mathur: As you and your associate looked at the previous complaints regarding very similar attacks in the Vaishali Nagar area, did you find any pattern to the timings or any other circumstances of these attacks?
Bhura: Yes. It always happened between 10 & 11 AM. He always did it at a crossing of two lanes—so that as soon as he spits, he is able to turn into the other lane, and flee.
I think those were the only patterns, so to say, that we noticed.
Mathur: Even in the video footage that we have of a similar attack—in the same locality—on a different woman, it strongly appears that this man spotted her walking in a lonesome, distant corner of a by-lane and toward the main street, where he was on his motorcycle. He stopped his own way forward on this main street after spotting her; turned around, and entered this by-lane specifically to spit on her face. This very much indicates that he scopes out his target in a routine fashion: a woman in a lonesome corner, from where he could escape after the attack into another street without being seen, let alone captured, by anybody else.
Thoughtfox (thoughtfox.xyz) is on the lookout for an apparent serial attacker of women in Jaipur, Rajasthan. This attacker is caught on camera in the act. This 43-second video footage dates to March 2, 2020; it is from the Vaishali Nagar area in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India.
What that also suggests is that this is very much a gender-based hate crime—specifically a man's attack on women. So, you would not want people to confuse it with a possible attempt on his part to spread COVID-19?
Bhura: No. No. Absolutely not. First, it was the first week of March, when most people in Jaipur didn’t even care for Corona. Second, the other attacks on the college women dated back to even 3 months before that, i.e., to December 2019 and January 2020.
It’s absolutely a meaningless attack on women in general, who have no relation to the man. It took me a few days to realise this because there seemed to be no other reason. Also, I want to mention that when he spat on me, I was so confused; I remember thinking “Ye kya ho gaya! Koi acid phek gaya?” [Whatever has just happened! Has somebody splashed acid on me?”] And then I realised it was spit! It’s just unimaginable!
I knew it would be difficult to track him. And why I kept at it was simply because I thought that if he has done this with so many women, he may gain confidence—and maybe he would take it to the next level soon, with acid.
Mathur: Or he may more directly attack women through some type of body contact—and may even abduct them. It seems like a very real possibility. That having been said, do you suspect that as the unfolding pandemic took over the administrative attention in the subsequent weeks of March—followed by April, May, and now June—the police, which was already pretty indifferent to your grievance, shifted its attention away entirely from your eventual complaint to other express matters of COVID-19?
Bhura: Yes it did. After the panic state of Corona began—in the late second week of March—this case was forgotten.
Mathur: Nevertheless—and despite the attacker's targeting of women—the unfolding pandemic adds a lethal edge to his sick practice. So, even if he continues with just his spitting on women's faces, he can be potentially lethal—as a carrier of COVID-19. Indeed, he would have been lethal because of his spitting alone even in March, whether anybody was aware of COVID-19 or not (since we now know that India began to get infected people in November or December itself).
So, in this retrospective light of the pandemic, would you not say that the police must double down on tracing this criminal? I mean, instead of this serial sexist spitter's being forgotten because of COVID-19, shouldn't there be an added urgency on the part of the local administration and the police to find and bring him to book?
Bhura: There should be! Because now they have a reason to treat it like a crime—instead of saying that we cannot register this FIR because it doesn’t involve eve-teasing or any physical contact. But with all the added pressure that came upon the police due to Corona, this case, I’m sure, is now at the back of the register, probably never to be looked into again.
Mathur: Well, Thoughtfox would try its best to get this matter to the attention of the local authorities just as much as to the National Commission for Women. And of course it was complete nonsense on the part of any police officials to suggest previously that this intentional spitting in your face or those of other women was not a crime; indeed, it would have been a crime even if he had done it to a man.
But before we wrap up this interview, I wish to ask you how those—other than the police—whom you initially approached for help reacted to your telling of your experience? Here at Thoughtfox, we wish to know about that as it would be a good reflection of the social attitudes toward incidents like this.
Bhura: That part was more shocking than the attack itself.
There’s a lady doctor, in the locality. Her camera would have directly captured the attack and probably shown the number plate—but she didn’t cooperate with me. She asked me to go away. And the next day, her camera was facing the wall! She didn’t want anything to do with the police.
There were some who said, “It’s just gutka; wash it off and forget it!”
Another woman he had attacked actually thought that it was an accident, and so she didn’t raise her voice at all!
When I narrated this incident to an acquaintance of mine, they first laughed at it! Made fun of it! And then said, “Ohh, we’re sorry, this would’ve been embarrassing!”
Having said that, there were a few people because of whom I could fight back with more courage!
My landlady showed immense support and courage: She would accompany me to the police station, even sit in the balcony all day so she would find this attacker loitering about on his bike! The gentleman whose wife faced the same attack also helped me throughout, and constantly gave me the courage to keep at it!
So yes, there are some good people out there too, but it is sad how most people would turn a deaf ear towards such issues.
Mathur: Let’s hope that this interview, and follow-ups here or elsewhere, sensitize people to the extent of trauma and helplessness that such attacks could generate for the victims of such attacks. But let's come back briefly to the attack itself.
Your photograph that we are sharing with our readers was taken 15 minutes after the attack. Prior to the photograph, you had washed the area of your face, head, shoulders, etc. And yet, we see the impact of the attack so clearly still. Was there any sort of infection that came by way of the attack?
A snapshot of the aftermath of the spitting attack on Ms. Bhura in Jaipur’s posh Vaishali Nagar, just behind the Vaibhav Complex. Ms. Bhura took this selfie 15 minutes after the attack—and following one waterwash that she had already given to her face, hair, neck, and shoulder area.
Bhura: There was no infection luckily. However, I had to bathe at least 3 times that day and the smell still wouldn’t leave my skin and hair. It took me another day to finally get rid of that disgusting smell from me.
Mathur: It is indeed rather disgusting: It is almost like one has to go through that kind of viciousness to truly understand its scope. And yet, we cannot underestimate the fact that one's spit itself can infect another person who comes in contact with it, leave aside who is intentionally targeted with it.
So, this gender-based hatred—which was at the heart of the attack on you—aside, we must take this attack seriously not only because of the additional fears of COVID-19 but also because of other infections that people's saliva can carry quite generally. We, at Thoughtfox, thus hope that not only the local authorities and the National Commission for Women but also the local health authorities would try to find this serial attacker.
Ms. Bhura we can't thank you enough for bringing this attack to light; for investigating this matter on your own; for sharing the evidence with us; and for highlighting the fact that other evidence and prior complaints presumably against the same man and pertaining to the same locality exist.
Bhura: Hoping for the best! And a big thank you to Thoughtfox for taking up this issue and raising awareness about it! It’s not uncommon, or limited to this particular city or state. It happens all around India with women of different age groups.
Mathur: If you happen to come upon any further evidence—or if other women who you know wish to share their experiences like this with us—then please let us know.
Bhura: Thank you once again! I will definitely let you know in case of any other developments.
Mathur: It was both our duty and our pleasure to have interacted with you about this. We particularly appreciate your taking the time out of your packed schedule and business travels to discuss this attack with us. We wish you all the best, and promise to stay on this issue as it develops. Thanks again!
If you have any information about this attacker or these types of attacks in Vaishali Nagar or in Jaipur, then please contact Thoughtfox or drop a comment in the box below. Please also share this editorial and our interview with Ms. Surabhi Bhura widely.
Dr. Piyush Mathur is a researcher and consultant in socio-political issues—and the author of Technological Forms and Ecological Communication: A Theoretical Heuristic (Lexington Books, 2017). He can be contacted here.