Five reasons why activists say Kerala woman’s arrest in bus incident needs a rethink

On January 24, a magistrate court in Kunamangalam, Kerala, postponed its ruling on a bail plea filed by Shimjitha Musthafa, a resident of Kozhikode who has been arrested on charges of abetting suicide of a man.

Kerala police had arrested Musthafa after a series of incidents that began on January 16. On that day, Musthafa uploaded a video on social media of herself on a bus – also in the video was a man, U Deepak, who Musthafa claimed had touched her inappropriately. She told a Malayalam news channel that she had also noticed the man acting inappropriately with another woman and then decided to film him.

The video went viral, and quickly gained millions of views. On January 18, Deepak died by suicide – three days later, police arrested Mustafa on charges of abetment of suicide, after which she was remanded to 14 days’ judicial custody.

Opposing her plea for bail, police argued that if she was released, she might “commit similar offences and encourage others including women to engage in similar acts, potentially leading to more suicides”.

For now, Mustafa remains in judicial custody, awaiting the next hearing of her bail plea on January 27.

Meanwhile, the tide of social media commentary has turned almost entirely against her. Commentators and even journalists have directed a barrage of criticism against her, accusing her of faking the harassment for attention, and to gain clout on social media.

Journalist Barkha Dutt organised a debate on her channel, Mojo Story, in which she described Musthafa’s behaviour as “follower farming”.

In this fraught conversation, some women have sought to argue that such criticism of Musthafa is unfounded, at best, and dangerous at worst, since, they say, it can skew public opinion severely and harm Musthafa’s chances of obtaining a fair trial.

Scroll spoke to women from the legal, activist and feminist circles to more precisely understand what they felt were the main aspects of the matter that were being overlooked as anger against Musthafa continued to build online.

1. It is not unusual for women to film alleged harassers in public spaces.

In the last few years, several women, some in Kerala, have shot videos of men harassing them on public transport and spaces, as a way of protecting themselves. This included an instance in November in Thiruvananthapuram, in which a woman passenger in a bus filmed a man who allegedly harassed her, then confronted and slapped him.

In 2023, a woman in a bus in Kochi filmed a man allegedly acting inappropriately – the woman also filed a complaint, after which the man was arrested. A year later, out on bail, he was filmed allegedly indulging in similar behaviour in another bus.

Sandhya Raju, an advocate from the Centre for Constitutional Rights Research and Advocacy, based in Ernakulam, explained that there was no law that specifically prohibited women from taking videos in public spaces and that women should not be deterred from doing so. “There are laws that prohibit invasion of privacy, but this happened in a public bus, so there is no law prohibiting that,” she said.

Raju argued that criticisms about the act of filming itself were an attempt to curb women’s power to respond to such incidents. “Some power comes with a phone, women have access to social media and can now demand justice,” she said. “All this outrage goes to show that society doesn’t want women to use phones for their safety.”

2. Filming is only the latest form of self-defence women resort to

Women in Kerala had long endured frequent molestation and harassment in public transport, activists and others explained.

Mrudula Bhavani, a journalist with Keraleeyam Masika, said that she had faced such treatment from men in public spaces since she was a teenager. “It is rampant in Kerala,” she said. “We can say we are a progressive state, but when it comes to gender, we are really regressive.”

While the impulse to film such incidents is relatively new, earlier women resorted to other means to protect themselves. “Women have always carried safety pins and other similar items on buses to stop men from touching them,” Raju said. “This is not new to women at all.”

Sarayu Pani, a writer, said that some women who film such incidents may do so as a way to draw wider attention to the problem. “For many women, posting about these experiences could be a way of healing, to find other women who have been through something similar and feel solidarity,” she said.

Some even see it as a way to more widely discourage such behaviour. “It is also the hope that somebody somewhere is watching the video and thinking that they never want to be the perpetrator in the video,” Pani said.

3. Musthafa’s body language and demeanour in the videos are irrelevant

Raju said she was surprised by how much the public was scrutinising Musthafa’s body language and appearance. “People are saying she was standing close to the man, that she was calm or smiling and did not ‘look’ like she was being molested,” she said. “People are analysing her at a microscopic level.

But as Bhavani noted, women have vastly different reactions to such incidents: some may respond calmly, some may scream, some may go into shock. “There is no uniform way in which women react,” she said. It was not for the public to decide what reaction is appropriate, she argued.

Further, some noted, now that the incident is the subject of a criminal investigation, only police have the resources and the authority to rigorously analyse the content of the video and the incident itself.

This pertained not just to Musthafa’s actions, but Deepak’s also, in the video and after. “The entire scenario cannot be inferred based on a clip, including the expressions of both people,” Raju said.

4. The fact that Mustafa did not go to the police before posting the video is not an indication of wrongdoing

Many commentators have argued that Musthafa was obligated to report the matter to the police rather than post publicly about it – they claim that the fact that she did not do so is proof of her malafide intentions.

But many women reject this argument, noting that women faced immense difficulties in navigating the criminal justice system. “We know that the police often even urges victims of brutal sexual assault to withdraw their complaints, so why would they register a complaint like this?” Raju said.

One study that focused on Delhi and Mumbai found that under half of all crimes were reported to the police, but that the proportion was even smaller when it came to sexual harassment – it noted, “only 1 in 13 cases in Delhi and 1 in 9 in Mumbai were reported to the police”. Across crimes, the most common reason for not reporting crimes was that victims “did not want to get stuck in police/court matters”.

“If you go to a police station, any Indian police station, it is very, very unlikely you will find someone who will take this kind of complaint seriously,” said Pani. “That is why women film themselves, because often, they don’t have access to any actual justice or fairness when they complain.”

Rekha Raj echoed this argument. She recounted that during the MeToo movement in Kerala, “we raised a case of sexual harassment involving someone I knew. At that point, for many people the only way to get justice was to name and shame, because going to the police was not an option.”

But she added that she believed “there is no black and white way of looking at this incident. While I’m not against people taking videos, we can discuss whether or not this is the right way to handle the issue. Society must be ready to have that conversation. But the state cannot punish people for it.”

5. Deferring Musthafa’s bail plea was a violation of her rights

Many women argued that even if police escalated the situation by filing a case, courts should have responded in a balanced manner. “Refusing her bail is atrocious,” Raju said.

She noted that there were no strong grounds for keeping Musthafa under arrest because she was not a flight risk. Further, she argued, she had no known connections to Deepak or his family, and thus was not in a position to influence any witnesses.

“At the most they should have interrogated her,” Raju said. “They have seized her phone and have all the evidence they need. They are treating her like she’s a hardened criminal or terrorist and have only arrested her because of the public outrage.”

For now, public opinion largely seems to be against Musthafa. Men in Kerala have taken to social media to post images and videos of themselves wearing some form of protective gear, including cardboard boxes, before they board buses, to “protect themselves” from women filing “false complaints” against them.

Pani noted that such reactions pointed to a fundamental misunderstanding of the underlying problem of women’s safety, and were signs of a society fractured along the lines of gender. “What reaction we’re seeing today is not one of a responsible society,” she said. “It is a response of a patriarchal society that is very, very angry that women are breaking out of their assigned role here.”