UP man held for molesting two Nagaland women at Kolkata's JW Marriott

Two young women from Nagaland, in Kolkata far from home, were allegedly molested by a man from Uttar Pradesh inside the lobby of the JW Marriott hotel on the EM Bypass in the small hours — between 12.30 am and 1 am — while they were cheering for the Brazil team. Police have arrested the accused and registered a case. The incident took place at one of the city's most prominent five-star hotels — a venue that markets itself on safety, surveillance and staffed security. That the alleged assault happened in the lobby, in the middle of the night, in what should be a controlled environment, raises uncomfortable questions about how seriously luxury venues take the safety of women guests once the cameras are assumed to be watching. The two women, both from Nagaland, were targeted late at night in a city where northeastern women have repeatedly reported harassment and racialised abuse. That context cannot be separated from this case: women from the Northeast, visibly marked as outsiders in mainland cities, carry a double vulnerability — as women, and as people whom harassers assume have no local support network to turn to. Police said the accused, a native of Uttar Pradesh, has been taken into custody. The investigation will establish the sequence of events; the hotel's cooperation — or lack of it — will be watched closely. This is not an isolated embarrassment for the city's hospitality sector. Kolkata's nightlife and hospitality venues have faced a string of safety questions in recent years, and each incident follows the same script: shock, a statement of cooperation, and then silence until the next one. The pattern is the story. What happens next will be decided by whether the case is pursued to conviction or quietly buried. Women from the Northeast deserve to know that a five-star lobby in Kolkata is as safe for them as it is for anyone else. Right now, two of them have reason to doubt it.