Despite Emma flagging this behaviour with security, how did the same man slip into the match? Is a woman’s word worth zilch? Why are so many lives lost to a crime like stalking that is by nature slow? What do Indian men have to do with a global problem? Connecting seemingly unrelated dots—but a systemic failure is apparent if one studies Emma’s case closely.
In 2022, Emma Raducanu was number 10 according to the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) ranking. She has also held the title of British No. 1 in tennis. Despite her loss, her legacy will also be a testament to Emma’s nerves and gumption at last week’s Dubai Tennis Championships match. Raducanu’s match against Karolina Muchova took a surprising and heartbreaking turn. Two games in, the 22-year-old athlete was suddenly seen trying to hide behind the umpire’s chair. It was soon discovered that a terrified Raducanu was distressed and close to tears, having spotted the same man who had approached her a day ago—with a letter and a photograph. Despite Emma flagging this behaviour with security and the personnel taking cognisance, how did the same man slip into the match? Is a woman’s word worth zilch? What does this incident draw our attention to?
“Low-risk” fatal crimes—the system kills
The more obvious issues of this incident would be women’s safety at the workplace or the specific vulnerabilities faced by a female athlete. However, the other aspect of this case is the debilitating statistics of stalking and the evidence of what police inaction has led to. Emma had notified security about the concerning behaviour. Despite the benefits of her position as a revered and celebrated athlete, the designated security personnel failed to keep the accused away from the stands.
Source: Sky News
The incident has reminded many of the infamous attack on Monica Selles at the peak of her career by a stalker of her peer and opponent, Stefi Graff. Selles was saved by a few inches from lifelong paralysis as the attacker had lodged his knife in her back, only inches away from critical organs. Selles lost the fierceness of her game, and her prospects to gild her name in international tennis history were cut short by this violence. Years have passed between these two incidents—a world of developments and “progress” seems to have taken place, yet stalking continues to plague generation after generation.
Last year, 25-year-old Doris Aguilar from Phoenix went missing on July 1. The same month, her body was found in a car, along with her long-term stalker—also dead. The stalker was a former colleague who had been obsessed with Aguilar. In March 2023, Zohreh Sadeghi filed a request for a restraining order that would last “99 years” as her stalker’s actions had been triggering “deep-seated fears.” A few weeks later, Sadegahi Khodakaramrezaei, the Texas truck driver who had been stalking her, fatally shot her and her husband.
In 2022, 21-year-old Farzana Yaqubi, a law student from Auckland, was killed two weeks after notifying the police that she was in “extreme fear” of the actions of a stalker. In 2020, Celeste Manno from Melbourne was killed by a former colleague, Luay Sako, who broke into her home in the middle of the night and stabbed her fatally. A 2024 report observed, “Manno was kind to him after his sacking, so he became infatuated with her, creating an Instagram account so he could message her and profess his love, the court heard.” Manno had also notified the police after the 12-month-long stalking was starting to turn vulgar and degrading. Despite obtaining an interim intervention order, Sako continued to contact her. Unlike most other violent crimes, the hints or symptoms of violence are quite apparent in stalking. However, this seemingly preventable crime persists in wreaking havoc.
The UK’s alarming problem- stalking
Emma’s homeland, the UK, has an alarming number of similar cases. It was not until 2012 that the UK criminalised stalking, yet cases have been seeing an exponential rise. From 2015 to 2018, 60 women had been killed by their stalkers because police failed to take the cases seriously. In 2020 alone, more than 80,000 incidents of stalking were recorded by forces. In 2016, Shana Grice‘s case shook the British media and the administration. The teenager from Brighton was being stalked by her ex-boyfriend Michael Lane. Grice had made five separate complaints against Lane between February and July 2016, but the police action was feeble as the case was considered “low risk.” Lane even had prior charges of stalking other women, but Grice’s complaints were stereotyped and not taken seriously, including being fined 90 pounds for wasting valuable police time. The same year Lane broke into Grace’s home, slit her throat, and tried to set her on fire.
Source: Getty Images
In 2018, two officers from Northumbria police were disciplined over failing to appropriately investigate the report of Dhillon’s stalking, which eventually led to the death of Alice Ruggles. Rachel Bacon, an assistant chief constable at Northumbria police, had said, “Since Alice’s death it has been recognised nationally that changes need to be made in how police respond to reports of stalking and harassment to ensure officers understand the heightened risks associated with stalking behaviour.” The police have been disciplined for very similar negligence on multiple occasions, but somehow, similar patterns keep showing up.
A few years later, in 2021, Gracie Spinks was stabbed by the stalker she had reported to the police. She was killed near the stable where her favourite horse was housed, the same location where a bag containing weapons, Viagra tablets, and a note with the words “Don’t lie” had been found over a month before the homicide. The police failed to investigate concrete evidence, and to make matters worse, the stalker, Michael Sellers, had priors. No amount of training can uproot the passive training of society – the rule of thumb seems to be, do not believe a woman’s words.
Stalking and men of Indian origin, a point of concern
As the media tries to digest Emma’s reaction, it would be sensible to study the priors to better understand why that day was significant for her. A former Amazon driver Amrit Magar had walked 23 miles to Emma’s home and had stolen her father’s shoe as a souvenir. The 35-year-old man was handed a five-year restraining order in 2022. The ordeal not only shows how public figures are vulnerable to such patterns of behaviour but also draws our attention to the name. The number of Indian-origin stalkers that have made British headlines and more is honestly concerning.
In 2017, Indian-origin man Pradeep Thomas was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for stalking and threatening his former girlfriend after she ended their relationship. In 2018, 35-year-old Sirtaj Bhangal was jailed at Isleworth Crown Court in London for launching a campaign of aggravated stalking and intimidation against a woman victim over five years. In 2019, 28-year-old Indian national Rohit Sharma was jailed for 29 months with a deportation order at the end of the sentence for stalking a woman for over 18 months. In 2021, 22-year-old Indian-origin student Sahli Bhanvnani, who had threatened a female student at Oxford Brookes University, was handed a four-month imprisonment, suspended for two years, and imposed a five-year restraining order.
In 2022, 28-year-old Indian-origin man Vishaal Vijapura pleaded guilty to stalking offences in a UK court for seven counts of stalking concerning aggravated offences against 121 victims. He was handed a meagre two years and eight months’ imprisonment. In a quizzical case from 2015, 32-year-old Sandesh Baliga escaped conviction after a court considered the wrong influence of Bollywood films. The pattern is not limited to Indian men, but it should be a cause for distress for Indian society – cause what we outsource must already have deep roots in our soil.
Examining the roots
India is a land of diverse gender-based violence and systemic disregard for reports – stalking is almost always dealt with on a social level unless symptoms begin to get drastic. In 2018, Shailza Dwivedi was killed by her husband’s ex-colleague from the Indian army, who had become obsessed with her. The same year, Varnika Kundu survived a violent chase by stalkers in SUVs. She went public with her experience and the police’s lacklustre action, resulting in the culprit’s arrest. But soon, the public mudslinging began as Babul Supriyo said it was a classic “boy-chase girl” scenario. The loudmouthed politicians often end up revealing the heart of the rot – the romanticisation of the chase and the stereotypes that make women vulnerable to such crimes.
Source: Getty Images
The same year, a case with a humbler profile was also reported – a 27-year-old woman, the wife of a vegetable vendor, who had been strangled to death by a man who had been obsessed with her. A year before that, 17-year-old Ragini Dubey had been murdered by Prince Tiwari, son of the village headman, who had been stalking her for a couple of months. Across social positions and political powers, the patterns of stalking and aggravated crimes seem to run deep.
Last year, a woman was killed in Ayodhya for resisting the advances of a stalker. The same year, a 21-year-old was fatally stabbed by an alleged stalker in Telangana. Also in 2024, Chennai Court awarded a death sentence to D. Sathish, who had killed the 20-year-old woman he had been stalking by pushing her in front of a moving train in 2022.
In 2021, a total of 9,285 cases of stalking were reported, showing nearly one case being reported every hour and 25 cases being reported in a day. In India, stalking is a bailable offence in the first instance despite precedence showing that more often than not, the stalkers strike again, sometimes fatally. According to Delhi police spokesman Madhur Verma (2018), “It has often been found that in cases where stalking leads to more serious crimes, it was not reported in the initial stages“. This claim can sound laughable when reports of police taking bribes from the accused to bury a rape case or where high courts declare they have no confidence in police action. Rigorous training and sensitivity assessment are important, but accountability to action is of utmost importance. Legislation and structure can at best create the skeleton – it is human action that can bring any possible change in the status quo of gender-based violence, in its many grotesque shapes and forms.
Police claim about how reporting can reduce violence and fatality is thrown out the window by the many evidence of victims meeting a tragic end despite notifying and ringing the alarm. Reporting can and will work once police and administration take stalking as a serious crime – or at least a significant symptom of an imminent crime that can be prevented. It is important to take into account other cultural markers of how society perceives stalking. The experience of being stalked is extremely distressing and can, in many ways, be described as a crime in slow motion. The crisis of an imminent attack can and does jeopardise the ability to carry on with life as it is. Yet, it is often perceived as an overreaction – not only by the police but also in our cultural expressions.
BBC’s report about the man who had ‘exhibited fixated behaviour,’ carried the subtitle “Emma Raducanu became emotional during her second-round match in Dubai on Tuesday” under a picture of her – mid-play. Emma carried on with her game after her panic-induced setback, but somehow the phrase that makes it to the top of the news is that she “became emotional.”
Watching an athlete who was smashing in the court suddenly cower behind the umpire post was heartbreaking, but focusing on her weakest moment continues to betray the collective resilience of women who show up despite the unending obstacle race designed by Patriarchy Inc. We must refocus our energy on how we talk about crimes committed by the diseased and afflicted members of society, about the negligence and inaction of the powerful members of society, enabling those crimes – and not just about the victims and survivors of those crimes.
She/they is an editor and illustrator from the suburbs of Bengal. A student of literature and cinema, Sohini primarily looks at the world through the political lens of gender. They uprooted herself from their hometown to work for a livelihood, but has always returned to her roots for their most honest and intimate expressions. She finds it difficult to locate themself in the heteronormative matrix and self-admittedly continues to hang in limbo
