Bengaluru woman creates maps to pin down sexual harassment zones in city

Many years ago, on New Year's Eve, cases of molestation were reported at the Brigade Road - MG Road junction in Bengaluru, Karnataka. But thanks to surveillance cameras, the police in the city got to know who the culprits were and what really happened.

But who keeps track of harassment incidents that take place across the city on a daily basis?

There is a solution to this which might in future help the police take suitable action quickly.

Nupur Patny, a fourth year student of Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology has worked on a map. The map identifies sexual harassment zones in Bengaluru. Nupur did this by asking women to paste post-it notes on the map of Bengaluru. This way she began to collect data on what women faced in different areas of Bengaluru.

Nupur calls her project 'It's Not My Fault'.

Nupur says this will facilitate post-incidental support to the sexual harassment victims on a digital platform.

Speaking to India Today, Nupur said, "My map is a free space for women to share their experience of sexual harassment in specific locations that have taken place. Going very local as to understanding what harassment happened and what kind of changes are needed which can eventually help the police to take preventive measures to avoid such situations and make women feel safer wherever they are and whatever they are wearing."

Nupur's next step is to develop an augmented reality-based heat map to mark out sexual harassment-prone areas in Bengaluru.

Her data indicates offences ranging from women being inappropriately touched, groped, stared at and tickled to being a victim to inappropriate gestures or sexual advances in public transit and other crowded places and photographed without permission.

Nupur also met Bhaskar Rao, Bengaluru city police commissioner who showed a lot of excitement to support her project and scale it up quickly.

The Police Commissioner told India Today, "This is a great initiative which she [Nupur] has taken up which we as police persons will not be able to do but it will be of tremendous value to us. So I called the young girl here and said you can do something beyond this. And she had her team of friends who are very much willing to come and help us to make a diagram of Bengaluru where women's harassment takes place the most. Definitely this input will be very useful for us to fix surveillance cameras for our Bengaluru safe city project."

In the future, Nupur says these maps will be available on smartphones as an application.

This will help victims to share their experiences and also help others while visiting that same area to know it's not safe.