Full report (pdf) - People's Union for Civil Liberties

provocative slogans and placards used by theagitators such as “Nanna Deha NannaHakku” (My body, my right) . This resultedin a section of the public taking matters intotheir own hands and assaulting theprotesters. When this happened the policedid their best to control the situation in thecourse of which some people might havebeen injured.On being questioned as to how they wereunable to control what was in effect an attackon unarmed and non-violent protesters andmaintain law and order which was theirprimary responsibility. On being asked whythey failed to ensure that women were notprotected from assault and serious hurt, Mr.Halesh Naik’s only response was to say thatpolice aggressively act to control situations,sometimes there is inaction by the police andsometimes mistakes happen as police arealso human beings.Response of TV9The team could not meet Nagaraj, thereporter of TV9 but was able to speak to himover the phone. When we asked him abouthow did he get the information about theraid, Mr. Nagaraj said that day he had beento the town and he received a phone callfrom some villager who said that there is araid going on in Shettarahalli. Thereby hethought it would be interesting to go andtake some photographs. He said since he wastoo far from the place of the incident, hethought he would directly capture on filmthe arrested persons in the police station.When he was questioned as to who allowedhim to go inside the station to film, he saidpolice themselves gave permission to enterthe station, along with his cameraequipment. When he was asked as to howhe could telecast the faces in the newswithout blanking out the faces of the(women), the reporter agreed that it was alapse on his side and it had happenedaccidentally and it was not intentional.This was corroborated by Somashekhar,news editor of the Bangalore desk of TV9 ,who admitted that though it is theestablished policy of their channel to blankout the faces of women and children whoare accused in a criminal incident, the policywas violated in this instance because of themistake of their copy editor, working underpressure of deadlines. Somashekhar said thatthe copy editor was reprimanded.Response of KHPT10The team also decided to meet those whowere funding Suraksha’s HIV/AIDS efforts ,i.e. the Karnataka Health Promotion Trust(KHPT).Our team expressed its concern to officials ofKHPT about the confidential informationcontained in the Sex Workers Register aboutsex workers and their clients, including theirHIV status, maintained by NGOs likeSuraksha, which work on HIV and AIDS .KHPT requires the agencies it funds tocollect such information, but in the event ofthis confidential information being disclosedto the public, vulnerable women, especiallysex workers in rural areas, would be put toextreme risk. KHPT needs to be concernedabout the human rights implications of suchunauthorized disclosure.Ms. Vandana Gurnani, director of KHPT,clarified that the Sex Workers Register is partof an individualized monitoring system (inaggregate and in individualized form) that isessentially designed “to reach the lastwoman” in an intervention campaign. Such