On Sunday, November 19, the night of the cricket World Cup final, a pub in Chennai’s Turnbulls Road broke the mandated curfew and stayed open past midnight. The police arrived and forced them to shut, but Tamil news channels including Thanthi TV and Polimer bafflingly turned on the women who were at the pub.
The reportage, rife with misogynistic remarks about the women’s clothes, implied that their interactions with the men at the bar were lewd and sexual in nature. Further, the news channel’s footage from the pub repeatedly focused on the women, policing their attire and trying to get close shots of their faces, despite being asked not to.
