punjab

Updated: Aug 05, 2017 21:22 IST

The woman who got stalked by Haryana BJP president Subhash Barala’s son Vikas and his friend Ashish Kumar had gone to pick up her vehicle in Sector 9, Chandigarh; it was parked there owing to a malfunction. In the adjoining Sector 8, the stalking began, which eventually ended in their arrests.

Talking to HT over the phone on Saturday after posting the horror on Facebook, she said, “My father was the support who stood by me as a rock. He was there the entire night with me at the police station.”

“They offered apologies, but that means nothing. I am safe. Had they been able to harm me, would these apologies help?” said the woman, who is a DJ. “What they did was a grave crime, and they must face the consequences.”

She termed her last 12 hours as harrowing. “We have not slept.”

Her father, an IAS officer posted with the Haryana government, wrote on Facebook: “I will be failing in my duty as a father to my daughter if I did not stand with her completely in this matter... As a father of two daughters, I feel compelled to take this matter to its logical conclusion. The goons must be punished, and the law must take its course. As would be expected, the goons are from influential families. We all know most such cases of harassment go unpunished and even unreported. We know it’s not going to be an easy struggle.”

He added that the “possibility of harassment and witch-hunting, threats and even physical harm is undeniable, even though unlikely”. “Influential families can sometimes take desperate measures to discredit or disable the complainants,” read his post. “I know that the trauma and hurt my daughter has undergone cannot be undone. If we do not persist in trying to bring the guilty to justice, more and more daughters will suffer this hurt. Maybe some may not be as lucky as my daughter. Someone has to stand up. We are standing. So long as we can.”

Police work overnight, phones keep ringing

Cops from the Sector-26 police station reacted swiftly after they got the distress call from the woman being stalked around 12.35 am on Friday night. A PCR vehicle and a team from the police station nabbed the two men; took them to hospital where a medical examination said they were drunk.

When they were brought to the police station, the woman and her father were there to lodge a complaint. It was around 2am; and that’s when BJP leaders from Haryana started coming to the station, sources said. Desperate calls to various senior police officials with ‘Dekh lo’ (‘please see’) requests started forcing many of the officers to either put their phones on silent mode or switch them off.

The fact that the woman’s father is a senior IAS officer apparently meant the pressure did not quite work. Before the accused duo got bail, many Haryana leaders were there at the police station throughout Saturday.