Hyderabad: You have heard this before but not perhaps from a police chief. Andhra Pradesh's DGP today blamed women's "fashionable and provocative" dressing for a rise in rapes, drawing a public snub from union home minister P Chidambaram.

"When you see food that gives good josh (arouses your passions), as time goes you tend to be naughtier. The police cannot control rape," Reddy said at his annual news conference. "People have become more fashionable. Even village women from coastal Andhra are wearing the salwar-kameez instead of the traditional dress (sari)."

Similar comments earlier this year by a Canadian police officer had sparked the global SlutWalk movement, where women deliberately march in "provocative" clothing. In New Delhi, Chidambaram said there cannot be any kind of policing on dressing by women, "certainly not by a DG of police", and added: "Each one in this country is free to wear whatever he or she wishes to wear."

Reddy, whose younger daughter is a college student, later issued a "clarification", explaining he had merely said that provocative dressing was "one of the factors" behind rapes.

"But what hurts DGP is for the reasons best known, when some news channels misinterpreted it,” went the statement, released in English.

"Also some of the prominent ladies, knowing very well what type of person DGP is, trying to react out of proportion thinking the misinterpretation as gospel truth."

-The Telegraph