Chhattisgarh nuns arrest case: Women’s commission demands FIR against right-wing workers for ‘harassment’

On Thursday, the chairperson of the women’s commission, Kiranmayee Nayak, told The Indian Express, “We took three hearings in the matter, but we have not received an appropriate response from government officials. We had asked them to furnish CCTV camera footage from the Durg Railway Police station, which shows the Bajrang Dal workers harassing the women inside the police station. On Thursday, we wrote a letter to the DGP, asking for an FIR to be registered against the right-wing workers named by the three women in their individual complaints to us.”

Nayak said that the police do not take action in 15 days, “then I will take this matter to the National Human Rights Commission, where we will ask the police to pay compensation to the women for failing to act on the issue.”

The three women have expressed their satisfaction at the action taken by the State Women’s Commission. They also said that the incident led to them losing the job opportunity, which the nuns were helping them with and that this was causing them financial difficulties.

The arrest of the nuns on July 25 had caused a major uproar, especially in Kerala, where the nuns were from. Christian groups, the Congress and Kerala’s ruling Left alliance strongly condemned the arrest.

Multiple videos of the scenes from inside the GRP station at Durg railway station had gone viral on social media.

After the incident, the three women were sent to a shelter, and later, they were allowed to return home to Narayanpur. The women then approached the Narayanpur police with a complaint against the right-wing workers, but they were asked to go to Durg district as the crime occurred there.

The women subsequently approached the State Women’s Commission in August.