Mumbai: “Disgusting” and “shameful” is how Bollywood celebrities Amitabh Bachchan, Bipasha Basu and Farhan Akhtar have dubbed the molestation of a teenager by a mob in Guwahati, Assam, in north east India.
The 17-year-old had gone to a pub with another girl on Monday night. She was looking for a car when 11 men pounced on her. The other girl escaped.
A video clip of the girl being molested was caught on camera and went viral on the net. It caused outrage.
Amitabh Bachchan: Horrid visuals on TV of molestation of young girl…but just a point. How does TV crew know of it live and why don’t they intervene?
Bipasha Basu: Guwahati molestation of a 17-year-old girl for 29 minutes on the road! Shameful! These monsters have to be punished!
Anupam Kher: My country gives me millions of reasons to be a proud Indian. But it also makes me feel ashamed to be one on many occasions.
Collective responsibility
Shekhar Kapur: As a society we must take collective responsibility for Guwahati for making incidents like this acceptable and rampant. Constant bombarding of female image as mere objects of sexual titillation is bound to alter perception of the immature male. Physical abuse of women and even rape is not a sexual act, but an act of humiliation and power by male lacking in self-worth.
Farhan Akhtar: Guwahati pathetic! Shameful! Indian women better realise that they are on their own.
Vishal Dadlani: I apologise to the girl, on behalf of this evidently depraved nation. Can’t even imagine her trauma. I swear, I’ll NEVER be a bystander while an innocent person needs help, no matter what the risk.
Rahul Bose: Sickened by the beating, molestation of a class 11 girl student in Guwahati. Saddened to the point of despair that none came to her rescue. How much more violence against women must we see before we realise it will end civilisation as we know it. What makes men silent onlookers to such carnage? What delight in seeing a 17-year-old girl brutalised?
R. Madhavan: Guwahati is a bitter reminder of how socially we are still a third world or worse country. If any genuine progress is to be made, then a drastic social change in mindset has to be enforced.
Mandira Bedi: Shameful. Disgusting animals who gloated while they molested a woman and played to a camera while at it. Sickening.