93 schoolgirls sexually harassed aboard Patna train // Woman raped and thrown out of tempo in Assam
A group of 93 schoolgirls travelling on a train from Patna to Dhanbad were sexually harassed for more than four hours in the wee hours of Sunday. The students along with three women teachers from Carmel School in Dhanbad and Digwadih in Jharkhand were returning after participating in a two-day environmental camp in Patna.
Around 10pm on Saturday, the girls and the teachers reached Patna railway station to find that their reserved seats in the Ganga Damodar Express had been occupied by a large group of men claiming to be examinees of the railway recruitment exam. The group approached the railway police, but the cops just asked them to enter the compartment and said the men would vacate the seats on their own. The men, however, refused to vacate the seats. After the train left Patna junction around 11.40pm, the men began harassing and molesting the girls. When the teachers protested, the men assaulted them. No co-passenger or train staff came to their rescue.
The ordeal lasted until the men got down at Koderma station four hours later. After the girls got down at Dhanbad railway station, they could be seen crying and narrating the incident to their parents who had come to pick them up. “It was a nightmare. I never want to travel in trains again,” a Class-9 girl told Hindustan Times. “Those men had grabbed all our seats and began harassing us. When our teachers protested, they slapped and assaulted them. We travelled the whole way standing and huddled together in queues, as the men kept on pulling us.” However, a police complaint will only be lodged on Monday, said one of the teachers travelling with the girls. “The students are very tired and traumatised, and need rest. So, we have decided to lodge a police complaint tomorrow,” said Sonali Singh, a teacher at Carmel School, Dhanbad.
Four men allegedly raped a woman inside a tempo, gouged out her eyes and beat her before throwing the victim out of the vehicle leading to her death in upper Assam's Lakhimpur district, sparking outrage from locals. The incident took place on Friday when the woman had boarded a shared tempo to pick up her six-year-old daughter from school at Boginadi area, about 14 km from the district headquarters town Lakhimpur, police sources said.
The woman was allegedly raped by the four men inside the tempo before they gouged out her eyes, injured her on the head and neck, they said. The locals saw the accused throwing the injured woman out of the tempo, about 50 metres away from Boginadi police station on the National Highway following which they informed the police which admitted her to a local hospital. The woman was later taken to the Gauhati Medical College Hospital where she succumbed to her wounds.
Women's organisations and locals blocked the National Highway 52 on Monday with her body and condemned the incident, demanding justice for the woman and arrest of the culprits. On the district administration officials assuring them to nab the culprits, the protesters withdrew their blockade on the road, which had disrupted traffic movement to and from Arunachal Pradesh for about two hours. Meanwhile, police has picked up two persons for questioning in this connection.
