I was barely 16 when I was first stalked. I didn’t notice him at first. Who thinks about ‘stalking’ when a young man walks in the same direction as you? Then, I began noticing him all the time, everywhere. He was outside my junior college when classes got over, outside the YWCA when I finished playing badminton, outside the drama club when rehearsals got over, outside the gate when I happened to look out of the window.
One day, he approached me; apparently he ‘loved’ me. I told my parents. I was told to ‘pay no attention’, and go straight to college and return home. My badminton sessions stopped. Drama rehearsals were a no-no. I felt punished. Worse was yet to come. When he approached me again, I refused to his proposal, point blank. Apparently, I had ‘rejected’ him after ‘leading him on’. How? I don’t know. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that he ‘loved’ me and I had ‘rejected’ him. He threatened to assault me so ‘no one else would have me’.
If it hadn’t been for my eldest brother who accosted the man (and I don’t know what was said), I wouldn’t be here to tell this story. I would have been just another statistic in a list of raped and/or murdered women."
This is a narrative by an Indian woman who does not wish to reveal her identity.
So what makes stalkers tick? Psychologists have for long been delving into their vast repository of cases to study the mind of a stalker.
Several incidents of
killing of women in public in Chennai have shaken the city. Swathi’s murder by P Ramkumar in 2016 and the recent killing of 20-year-old
Ashwini by Alagesan have been the most shocking yet. "These people, suffering from mental illness, see a purpose in
stalking," said Dr N Rangarajan, consultant psychiatrist at Chennai-based Psymed Hospitals. "We have identified several kinds of stalkers – one of them being those with delusions of love (De Clerambault syndrome), who stalk celebrities, convinced they are in love with them. But, this kind responds to medical treatment," said Dr Rangarajan.
What has proved most shocking is the public display of brutal retaliation. Barely three months after Swathi’s hacking, Karuna, a 21-year-old woman was repeatedly stabbed at Burari, New Delhi, allegedly by an acquaintance who had been stalking her for a while. "Some youth have little tolerance to rejection," said Chennai police commissioner A K Viswanathan. "If they desire, it should happen, irrespective of what she (the victim) desires. They don’t think of making themselves desirable," he said.
Perhaps the most common ‘stalker’ is the one who is attracted to a woman and feels compelled to reach out to her. "This kind of stalking is glorified by movies. Such stalkers are insecure and unable to express their affection. They have neither the skills nor the ability to woo a woman," said Dr Rangarajan. This stalker watches from a distance and trails the woman.
The third kind and perhaps the most dangerous are those who take affront to the woman not responding to them. They think the woman is leading them on and when she does not reciprocate, they think they can force her to live with them and convince her of their love and even harm them when they fail.
"The ones that resort to violence suffer multiple personality issues. Just like ragging and bullying, stalking has to be taken very seriously," said Dr M S Bhatia, professor and head of the department of psychiatry, University College of Medical Sciences and GTB Hospital (Delhi), who also co-authored a research paper on stalking a few years ago.
