A girl from Swastik Park thought a mentally disabled man was eve teasing her. Her parents went to his home and slapped him. This needs to be talked about.
So this incident happened recently in Swastik Park and I cannot stop thinking about it.
There’s a man in the neighbourhood who is intellectually disabled. Anyone who has lived around there knows him. He mumbles to himself constantly — talks about random things, to no one in particular. It’s just what he does.
A girl mistook his muttering for eve teasing. Thought he was saying something to her.
She went home and told her parents.
Her parents — angry, not asking a single question — marched to this man’s home and slapped him.
A man who cannot fully process the world around him. Who cannot articulate a proper defence. Who probably didn’t even understand why a stranger had just hit him. And someone thought that was justice.
And then — reportedly — he was told to stay indoors.
So now a disabled man has lost the right to exist in his own neighbourhood because a family refused to take 30 seconds to ask “wait, does this man even have the capacity to eve tease someone?”
The harder question:
Is this what we do to people who are visibly vulnerable? Who cannot fight back? Who don’t even understand what they’re being punished for?
Because that’s not protecting your daughter. That’s just picking the easiest target.
The man wasn’t eve teasing. He was just existing. And he got slapped for it.
This bothers me deeply and I feel like it should bother more people.