NEW DELHI, OCTOBER 10: P.E. Usha does not go to office any longer. Her colleagues at Calicut University, where she works as an assistant, and the state have ensured that. Her husband has abandoned her. She has been forced to move with her 10-year-old daughter to faraway Thiruvananthapuram.Usha's crime was she tried to bring to book a man who sexually assaulted her inside a bus. Ten months after she filed a complaint, she may be a familiar face in a state which boasts of high social indices and empowerment of women. But she has been consistently harassed and ostracised and justice is nowhere in sight. Just last week, the university authorities issued a circular banning the newspaper Malayala Manorama from the campus for publishing Usha's first-person account of her traumatic experience.On December 29, 1999, while returning home from Kozhikode at 9.30pm, Usha was sexually assaulted by a co-passenger. ``The man masturbated on my body. I cried out for help and requested to stop the bus,'' says Usha, who is in Delhi to attend a women's conference. With fellow passengers coming to her help, the bus was taken to the closest police station.But she was in for a shock. ``The policemen were very keen to know the graphic description of the act and they even demanded that I remove the semen-stained dress then and there itself, '' she says. The police filed the complaint but not before asking her embarrassing questions. The accused, an employee of the Regional Engineering College, Kozhikode, was taken into custody and remanded for a night.A week later, when Usha returned to work, life had changed. Colleagues had turned hostile after, she alleges, leaders of the powerful CPM-backed employees' union spread false stories. Usha had taken on the union earlier on some issues.The university administration wasn't willing to help. ``My boss, a woman, declined to take up the complaint saying it would vitiate the office atmosphere and create problems for me. So I had to go to the registrar directly to file the complaint as per the Supreme Court guidelines,'' says Usha.The university instituted an inquiry committee which, Usha says, comprised mostly pro-CPM people. Another committee of the university syndicate found her case ``not strong enough'' and rejected the plea for want of ``enough evidences.'' Usha went to court. Her case is pending with the Kerala High Court.Meanwhile, she alleges, some of her colleagues unleashed a wave of canards. She took leave and stopped going to office. ``I was all alone to fight this. Those who supported me got frustrated after hearing the propaganda against me. I was pictured as a sexual partner to the research scholars. Autorickshaw drivers refused to take me to my quarters. Even my daughter was not left out. I was threatened over the phone that she would be kidnapped, raped and killed. I totally collapsed, '' Usha says.She received little help from the state. The State Women's Commission has refused to intervene since it is a police case.Kerala has seen the number of sexual harassment cases going up from 562 in 1990 to 1,809 in 1999. Though the entire state has been talking about Usha's case, there are few organisations willing to support Usha.``It is not my prestige or my family life or my job that I have lost. What I have lost in this struggle is me - myself. With the little courage and conviction that has left in me, I am now waging my last fight for justice,'' says Usha. ``I thought if I admit failure it would be a failure for working women at large.''
