‘Was slapped, punched and kicked’: Assam woman, 22, fought off 2 abductors in bus
The woman, a graduate studying to be a civil servant, told her family that she tried to get off the bus moments after boarding the vehicle but the men stopped her
SILCHAR: A 22-year-old woman was slapped, punched and kicked before being dumped by the roadside in Assam’s Sribhumi after she fought off two men who tried to sexually assault her in a private bus, her father said on Wednesday.
The woman, a graduate studying to be a civil servant, told her family that she boarded the orange-coloured private bus to return home from Badarpur on Tuesday afternoon but tried to get off moments later because she felt unsafe. There were hardly any other passengers in the bus.
But they didn’t let her, said her father.
“They tried to rape her and when she confronted, they started beating her. She was slapped, punched and kicked by the two men in the moving bus. They tried to strangle her and threw her by the roadside near Chargola,” he told HT.
“She had gone to the circle office in Badarpur to collect some documents and called me at 4:50pm to say that she was returning,” he said.
“Around half an hour later she called me and said she was attacked and also shared her location through WhatsApp. We rushed to her using the location and found her near the Chargola area in an unconscious condition,” he said.
They took her to the Sribhumi Civil Hospital with the help of the police. “She has both external and internal injuries but more than this, the incident has affected her mentally. She is traumatised,” he said.
Sribhumi superintendent of police (SP) Partha Pratim Das said a case has been registered under sections of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and the two suspects including the driver have been detained.
“Prima facie, it looks like a case of physical assault and we are investigating the matter further,” the SP said.
Das said the bus was tracked down with the help of CCTV footage from a nearby area. “We are going to record the statement of the victim and we are optimistic that more information will be found in the investigation,” he said.
The SP declined to reveal the identity of the suspects at this stage.
