‘Moral policing’ in Agara Lake, actress Samyuktha Hegde protests

By Qamar ZJ

On Friday evening, actress Samyuktha Hegde was stopped from doing her usual fitness exercises and flowing the hoops at Agara Lake. She was accused of obscenity for wearing a sports bra and practising hoola hoops. In the fracas that followed, one person threatened her, and park caretaker Kavitha Reddy called her three-member group to stop the ‘cabaret dancing’.

According to Hegde’s Instagram post, “In one of the videos, you can see Kavitha Reddy charging at my friend and attempting to hit her. When we were waiting for the police to arrive, some people in the park who knew her started supporting her and playing moral police, and asking us if it is our culture to wear sportswear.” She also mentions another person Anil trying to threaten her. “In my line of work, even false news is enough to destroy my career, and he threatened me exactly of that and the police stood there and just watched. This is when I decided to go live and have our side of the story put out there in the open.”

In the video, you can hear someone in the group saying that she should be booked for drugs. Hegde overhears this and mentions about the false allegation in the 15-minute video. When she tries to get out of the park, she finds that the gates are locked. Some of the joggers are also seen supporting the actress and telling the cops that she had done nothing wrong. To testify herself, Hegde removes her jacket to reveal a sports bra to prove that she was not wearing anything ‘obscene’.

In her defense, Kavitha Reddy says that the girls were playing loud music and dancing, which is not allowed in public spaces. “One senior citizen also walked up to them and asked them to stop the hoola hooping in public as he found it obscene,” says Reddy. “When the security guards objected to their entry today, the girls abused them. Therefore, when they called me, I had to go and intervene in the matter.”

Public hooping is not an easy task. It requires tremendous will power and dedication. Read it here. While hoola hooping in public parks is quite common abroad, it’s uncommon in India. This is particularly because the dancer uses her waist to balance the hoop and move to the music. While some might enjoy the great brain and body coordination, others might consider it obscene because of the naked midriff and the way the person moves her body. “This is the sort of dance that needs to be done indoors,” says Reddy.

Hegde is shocked and livid by the ‘moral policing’ experience. She alleges that while she gave a written complaint to the HSR police station, she was not given any acknowledgement. “It is not easy being strong around people who are trying to break you, and having to listen to so many people harass us for doing nothing,” says Hegde. “This is just wrong.” When we called the HSR Layout cops, they said that Reddy was at fault, and they did not find anything wrong with the actress. “We warned Kavitha Reddy and left her; if it was a man, we would have arrested him for misbehaving with the girls,” the officer told Residents Watch.