India has a woman President, a woman is heading the ruling party, one has even touched the stars and yet another is heading a successful international business enterprise, but safety for women on Indian streets remains abysmal.

The two women, who were sexually harassed by over 60 men in Mumbai, still refuse to lodge a formal complaint with the police, saying they are not happy with the media attention the incident has been garnering.

Sources in the Mumbai police, however, claim that they have cracked the case. Two men, out of 13 detained have been identified as the molesters and are being interrogated.

This case, in particular, has been made tough for the Mumbai police because of the victims’ reluctance to lodge a formal complaint.

However, this is by no means an isolated case. In fact, molestation victims rarely come forward to complain. An instance in point is last year’s infamous molestation case during the New Year’s Eve’s revelry at the Gateway of India.

A lack of a primary complainant forced the Mumbai police to charge the five accused of theft, instead of molestation. Even though a chargesheet had been filed in the case, the trial is still awaited. Legal experts believe problems that stall police investigations into cases of sexual molestation are usually the lack of a primary complainant.

However, another problem appears to be the attitude of the police themselves, to such cases, an attitude which was revealed when Mumbai’s Police Commissioner D N Jadhav accused the media of making a mountain out of a molehill.

 "Keep your wives at home if you want them safe," he said, "These kind of small things can happen anywhere."

Despite the Commissioner’s casual stance, the Mumbai police have responded with creditable efficiency in this case, even requesting the public to help them, for a cash award. However, the question remains:

Do hooligans think they can get away with molestation?

Debating the issue on CNN-IBN’s Face the Nation were lawyer and social activist, Flavia Agnes; criminal lawyer Majid Memon; Inspector General of Police (CID, Maharashtra) Meeran Borvankar and fashion designer Rina Dhaka.