Police in India are seriously cracking down on what they call morally questionable behaviour between the sexes, behaviour that can be as innocent as taking a selfie.
Over the past while, authorities arrested a pair of unmarried friends for riding on the same motorcycle and harassed a couple sitting together on the beach because it was unclear if they were husband and wife.
Now, taking selfies has become the target of the so-called 'moral police', who say that it’s inappropriate for men and women to be that close, touching each other, for the sake of a photograph.
A group of seven friends in their early twenties were accosted by police on the Dahisar Bridge, and the men taken to the police station where they were fined for touching their friends. A 21-year-old woman in the group was also given a lecture about letting men touch her.
People in Mumbai are understandably bummed, because the new rules – which were originally created to protect women – have taken this extreme turn with the population is being ‘morally policed,’ which is something the Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria specifically instructed against.
The extreme crackdown happened right before the beginning of the Navratri festival, which draws large crowds to public spaces and cops were preparing for potential harassment of women. After the arrests, the police were promptly made to take a workshop to educate them on the difference between sexual harassment and friends hanging out doing friend things.
Picture: Getty
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.