A 40-year-old woman and her 15-year-old daughter jumped off a running train in India, which has an atrocious record of rapes, after a group of men attempted to rape the girl late Saturday night.
The mother and daughter, who were travelling from Kolkata to Delhi in an unreserved coach of the Howrah-Jodhpur Express, were forced to jump off the train when the men tried to drag the girl into the toilet, the Hindustan Times reported. The incident happened when the train was between Chandari and Kanpur railway stations.
The two fainted after jumping off the train. They remained unconscious for nearly two hours. After regaining consciousness, the injured mother and daughter walked to the Chandari railway station where people called an ambulance and rushed them to the Lala Lajpat Rai hospital.
The Government Railway Police (GRP) came to know about the incident late on Sunday.
“We are in the process of registering an FIR on the complaint,” HT quoted Ram Mohan Rai, SHO, GRP Kanpur as saying.
The woman’s husband works in a private firm in Delhi and the daughter is a ninth grader in Kolkata.
The woman told the police that the group of around 10-15 men started taunting and teasing her daughter soon after the train left Howrah.
They also tried to grope the girl following which the mother rushed to the Railway Protection Force (RPF) constables escorting the train when it stopped at two stations. She claimed she complained twice about the constant harassment, first when the train was near Allahabad, and again at Allahabad.
“The constables accompanied me to the compartment and nabbed three of them. They even slapped them and took them away,” she told HT at the hospital.
But the men went back within 30 minutes, she alleged, perhaps after bribing cops. They got more aggressive after the train left Allahabad and kept threatening them that they would drug the girl and sell her off, according to the mother.
Around 10 pm, four to five men pounced on the girl when she was going toward the toilet. Hearing her scream, the mother said she rushed toward them and fought with them before finally jumping off the train with the daughter.
“In the struggle, my daughter’s clothes were torn. We had to jump off as we had no choice,” HT quoted her as saying.
