In a quiet corner of Malka park, Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh, Rohan, 25, and Malvika, 22, (names changed to protect privacy), are seated next to each other on the grass. Between them is a bag placed for ‘propriety’, so they are not subject to police scrutiny. The couple frequents the park after work days, but this Wednesday evening Rohan is introducing his partner to his best friend who works in a different city, via a video call.
Every time someone walks by, the couple looks up in panic. The fear of being questioned by the police’s Anti-Romeo squad lingers. “Are we doing anything wrong by sitting and talking?” Malvika says, fiercely. “If we have a few hours and we just want to be by ourselves, where do we go?” she says, in a social setting where partnerships out of choice are still considered shameful. The couple knows of people who have been questioned by the Anti-Romeo squad that was set up to “make places completely safe for women and girls,” the initial order had said.
In March 2017, the Uttar Pradesh police, under the direction of the Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, formed Anti-Romeo squads in all 75 districts of the State. U.P. police data from 2017 to April 2024, accessed by The Hindu via a Right to Information (RTI) request, shows that 30,496 people were arrested, 22,559 cases were registered, and 1.26 crore people were issued warnings, which “provided them an opportunity for improvement”, the RTI response said.
In 2016, U.P. registered 49,262 cases of crime against women. In 2022, this climbed to 65,743. In both years, the State registered the highest number in the country. Despite the numbers, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), also in power in Rajasthan now, promised in its manifesto, to establish Anti-Romeo squads in every district, during the Assembly elections last year.
Squad control
The squads, 1,702 in all, with two or three under each of its NUMBER police station, are positioned in public areas that see a high footfall, such as education institutions, markets, and parks. Each police team is made up of a constable, head constable, assistant sub-inspector or a sub-inspector. Female staff constitute 4,166 in all, with 3,354 male staff, forming Anti-Romeo collective. The squads, sometimes in plain clothes, question, and if necessary pick up, youth who they identify as ‘Romeos’.
A UP police officer unfamiliar with the Shakespearean play, says a Romeo is a man, usually in his youth, found “loitering around”, either in a group or alone. Another officer at a Mahila Thana says, “We understand from the body language and the way they dress, if their intent is ‘good’ or not.” Young men with a few shirt buttons open, groups of men in the vicinity of a girls’ school or college, or just a man with a woman are targeted by the squads.
Special standard operating procedures were prepared in all districts and ‘hot spots’ identified to prevent incidents of crime against women, like molestation, chain-snatching, and stalking.
Many women say this robs them of their choice to meet partners and friends of another gender. Young men fear stepping out to enjoy themselves, because they may be branded ‘Romeos’.
In another corner of the same park in Bulandshahr, Akash, 22, a stenographer, and Sneha, (names changed), 23, who works in a Noida-based company, sit next to each other, despite a run-in with the cops.
Three months ago, the two had decided to meet late one night, since Akash finishes work only by 9 p.m. “While we were walking on the road, the police asked me who we were, and to avoid any situation, we said we were friends. Then they got out of their vehicle and looked straight at us. The police told me to go back home, or we would get into trouble. We left quickly. Now, we only meet in parks during the day,” says Akash. They avoid calling themselves a couple in public.
True detective
About 500 metres from Malka park, is a mahila thana (all-woman police station), one of NUMBER in the State. A head constable explains that if a couple is causing a “public nuisance” they give them a warning. “We patrol areas and try to understand from the woman’s body language if it is consensual.” Men are usually let off with a warning, even if the police feel the woman has not been coerced. “We will ask for the youth’s parents’ numbers and make calls to their homes. If the parents say it is ok, we do not press any further. In some cases, parents scold their children,” she says.
Bulandshahar: 19/06/2024:To go with Ashna and Samridhi’s Spotlight article: Women Police officials pose for a photograph at a woman police station in Bulandshahar in Uttar Pradesh on June 19, 2024.
Photo by Shashi Shekhar Kashyap/ The Hindu
| Photo Credit:
SHASHI SHEKHAR KASHYAP
The officers add that they go to schools, where they address girls through seminars and tell them to stay away from ‘men who loiter’ in the street. Dolly Anand and Radhika Singh, college students, both 19, say Anti-Romeo squads are “for our safety” and help them so parents “let us go out”.
Over the years, the number of cases being registered have remained consistent in some districts, while they have gone up in some. RTI data from a police station in Jhansi district’s Babina, shows that 1,342 people were booked in 2017 when it was first implemented. The numbers stayed consistent until 2023, when 1,397 cases were recorded. Meanwhile, Meerut recorded one arrest every year until 2020, where it rose to 30. There were 20 arrests in 2020, 14, 17 and 29 in the following years respectively.
RTI responses also revealed that one of the common sections under which people were booked was IPC Section 294 (obscenity in public). In Kanpur Dehat for instance, all cases recorded in one station since 2017 were under the section. A station in Agra too, saw a majority of cases being registered under the same section. Other IPC sections that were applied to cases include Sections 354 (criminal force), 508 (causing a person to believe they will be an object of divine displeasure), and 323 (voluntarily causing hurt).
According to the National Commission of Women, Uttar Pradesh recorded 3,544 complaints of crimes against women, out of a total of 12,600 complaints, in the first half of 2024. While initially implemented to prevent harassment of women, RTI responses showed that women too are often questioned and, in some cases, arrested.
Data from a station in Moradabad shows that 115 men and 10 women were arrested between 2017 and 2024. A station in Kanpur recorded a total of 856 arrests since 2017, of which 614 were men and 242 were women.
In Hapur, Rahul (name changed), 18, who recently secured a government job, is wary every time he visits a park with his partner. He says, “Around a month ago, I was sitting with her on a bench, and we were recording a Reel. Four police officers caught me and brought out a stick. They told her that they would call her parents and she got scared. Then they took me to the station, where they warned me and eventually let me go after I told them I would not do it again.”
Another man in his 20s was questioned when the police thought he had one extra shirt button open. “I got away by saying I was going to the temple,” he says, cognizant of the general bend towards religiosity in a State where CM Yogi is a Hindu monk who dons saffron clothes, and is mahant (chief) at the country’s biggest Gorakhnath Math (monastery).
A married woman, 24, who works as a school teacher in Bulandshahr, was also questioned by the police, when she was with her husband. “When I showed them my mangalsutra, the cops jokingly said I should ensure it was visible,” she says.
Cop land
Shadab Bano is a history professor at Aligarh Muslim University, and also teaches a course in gender history. She feels it’s a tool “to threaten and harass young couples”, because there are already laws in place for sexual harassment, and the police should work on implementing those. “It is problematic that they are taking a moral policing route in the name of protecting women. It is the state supporting patriarchy in the name of protection.” She adds that “too much protection” is another form of violence. “It gives the state and the family the legitimacy to control a woman’s life.”
Amit (name changed), a 29-year-old historian and a resident of Kanpur, was in Lucknow in December 2022, when he was visiting Rumi Gate around 1.30 a.m. with a female friend. “I just wanted to show her how beautiful this city was. We were just having tea, and two cops, on a bike, asked me what we were doing,” he says, almost apologetically. “I tried explaining to them that we were just having tea, but they told us they’d take us to the nearest chowki (police station). I told them that they couldn’t take a woman to the chowki after sunset.” The police then “made obscene comments” he says. “They didn’t have name badges and confiscated my phone. I managed to get out of the situation with the help of my family members, but it was traumatising for me,” he remembers.
A senior police officer involved in the implementation of the project, says Anti-Romeo squads help when the woman’s community is Hindu and the man’s in Muslim, and there are communal tensions. “However, we ensure that equal action is taken,” he claims.
Hindu groups such as the Bajrang Dal, the youth wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), have an unofficial role to play in the State that brought down a mosque and built a temple on its ruins. A Bajrang Dal member, who ‘manages’ western U.P., says that they ‘assist’ Anti-Romeo squads by “tracking both men and women” to ensure that “justice is delivered”.
While they claim, they work against ‘love jihad,’ on the ground, it starts with tracking the movements of girls and women, depending on who they are going out with. “Sometimes, family members and people from a neighbourhood reach out to us, so we act on that ‘complaint’,” he says.
Members of his team also track digital footprints, where they keep an eye on people under their ‘jurisdiction’. If they see a social media post with a Hindu woman and Muslim man, they flag it to the police. He says this is protectionist, for “humari betiyan (our daughters).”
Once a woman is ‘rescued’, he says, members of Durga Vahini, the VHP’s women’s wing, ‘counsels’ her and her parents about the “good and bad” of infer-faith relationships. They don’t mind if a Hindu woman and man are together, except if the man indulges in what he calls gundagardi (villainous behaviour).
A member of Durga Vahini explains that they have also “developed contacts in schools and colleges, with principals and teachers”. They share complaints of teenage boys and men who they believe spend an inordinate time in the neighbourhood of the education institutions.
Anas Tanwir, a Delhi-based lawyer, originally from U.P. says that the state is within its right to constitute these squads. “However, if it involves civilians, people who are not designated officers, and are serving as vigilantes, it is illegal. Further, if two consenting adults are questioned by the police or vigilantes get involved, it is illegal.”
The targeting of minorities goes beyond religion. Hamsafar, a support centre for women, youth, and queer persons, has dealt with cases of trans couples being harassed too. Ruchi Rastogi, a programme coordinator says, “When it started in 2017, trans couples were picked up quickly. Police would question, blame, and misbehave with them at times,” she remembers. Their challenge was to get trans people, already vulnerable, to file a complaint against the police. “We understand people are scared of power and the harassment they might bear later.”
She explains that in U.P. rural and urban centres, “Even when we try to explain the concept of consensual relationships to families it is difficult, because ideas of ‘ladki ghar ki izzat (the woman as the upholder of the family’s respect in society),‘ and ‘parivar ka naam (the family name)‘ continue to persist.”
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