Mumbai: 20-Year-Old Girl Molested By Beggar In Local Train
A 35-year-old ragpicker brutally assaulted a 20-year-old woman in the ladies’ coach of a local train while trying to snatch her backpack.
A 35-year-old ragpicker brutally assaulted a 20-year-old woman in the ladies’ coach of a local train while trying to snatch her backpack. The 20-year-old student boarded the local train at Prabhadevi station at 5.30 pm on 6th June 2022, for Churchgate. She was travelling in the women’s compartment along with three co-passengers. She was sitting by a window when a man named Pappu Gupta, a resident of Goregaon boarded the local at Charni Road station and sat opposite her. He then got up and sat beside her. Spooked, the survivor got up to go stand by the door when he grabbed her bag, and said ‘baitho, baitho… kaha jaa rahi ho?’ She manages to get away from him, and stands near a co-passenger who was by the door. Gupta followed her and stood close to her. The woman and two others, scared, ran to the other side of the compartment. He tried to push her off the train, but failed. He then pulled her hair. She fell, and Gupta sat on her and bit her nose and upper lip. The survivor was bleeding, she grabbed his head and banged it on the iron rod at the door.
Seeing the girl’s struggle, the co-passenger pulls the chain. As the train stopped, Gupta grabbed her backpack and mobile phone and jumped off. Male passengers in the next compartment, who heard her cries for help, also jumped off the train and started chasing him. Once on the tracks, Gupta picked up stones and started throwing them at the men following him. Undeterred, the passengers nabbed Gupta and thrashed him and then handed him over to the Churchgate Government Railway Police (GRP). Police book him under various sections of the IPC. While woman insists it was a brutal sexual assault, Senior Inspector Vijay Tayade said, “The intention behind the man’s act matters. It was only to rob the woman, and we have recorded her statement.”
