Monday, December 1, 2014

Some Indian women are beginning to fight back against the violence of Indian men

Two sisters getting harassed and touched by three men on a bus in India weren't getting any help from other passengers, so they took matters into their own hands: A video of them using their belts to beat the men has gone viral. Police, meanwhile, have since arrested the three men. The sisters are identified as Arti and Puja (also being spelled by some sources as Pooja) Kumar, ages 22 and 19, and local law authorities say that they will get some kind of cash award for their bravery. "The men started to abuse me and touch me. I told them, 'If you touch me again, you'll get beaten up,'" says Puja. "They called a friend on the phone and told him to 'come over because we have to beat up some girls.'" The girls began fighting when the men began harassing a pregnant passenger, too. It was the pregnant woman who recorded the altercation on her phone. The girls were eventually forced off the bus and say that they fended off the trio yet again. The pregnant woman got off at the next stop and accompanied the sisters to the local police station in the northern state of Haryana. Puja's view: “A woman's rape starts the moment she withstands the dirty looks of such men. If you hit back hard, then only you can survive." The incident resonates in light of the gang rape of a young Indian woman on a bus in 2012.

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