Why stalkers take recourse to hate in the name of ‘love’

CHENNAI: The murder of software professional S Swathi nearly two years ago at Nungambakkam Railway Station remains a stark memory. Obsessive stalking and murders have occurred with frightening regularity in the city and the state. A month after Swathi’s killing, a youth in Villupuram set himself afire, embracing teenaged Naveena and killing her; barely a year later, Akash burned alive Indhuja along with her mother for turning down his proposal; last month, 14-year-old Chithra Devi was set afire by her relative Balamurugan whose marriage proposal she had rejected.
On Friday, the murder of college student Ashwini Mohan, 20, by a youth outside her college in full public view evoked horror and set off yet another round of debate over safety of women and their vulnerability, which observers also blame on society’s ineptitude. Public display of such savage retribution has time and again shocked Chennai. But the incidents have neither inspired social activism nor shaken society to its core.

“We tried approaching both men’s and women’s colleges to conduct programmes for awareness on stalking. But college managements suspected our motive. They thought our initiative was agenda driven,” said campaigner Iswarya V, the author of #CallingOutStalking. Two years ago, Iswary launched the campaign against glorification of stalking in films along with NGOs Red Elephant and Lime Soda Films. They claim a certain amount of success, attributing it to a few film directors publicly acknowledging that their films did romanticise stalking.

National Crime Records Bureau statistics are a poor reflection of ground reality. There were only 11 complaints of stalking in TN in 2015 and 28 the following year. Though 45 men were arrested in these two years, conviction rate was nil.

“Police have been responsive to complaints of stalking,” said city police commissioner A K Viswanathan. “In the case of Ashwini, when she registered a complaint against Alagesan, the Maduravoyal police were willing to arrest him. But, her family was not keen to persist with the case,” he said.

The reportage of such incidents in the media has also come in for flak. If the victim has known the perpetrator or had a relationship with him, they tend to label him as “spurned/jilted lover”. Even if she was uninterested in his advances, he earns the “one-sided lover” tag. “The problem is exacerbated in vernacular media due to the lack of a well-known Tamil equivalent for the word ‘stalking’ or ‘stalker’. To change this narrative, we coined the term ‘vanthodardhal’ for stalking on the analogy of ‘vanpunarvu’ (rape) and ‘vankodumai’ (sexual harassment),” said Iswarya.

The idea was to emphasise the psychological violence inherent in stalking and also to strip away any association of love from the crime. “So far, the word has not been widely adopted but we are working to create awareness. It’s now included in the Tamil Wiktionary,” Iswarya said.