‘Probe railway police insensitivity’

Reacting to the insensitivity of the Railway Protection Force when a woman commuter approached them to file a complaint after being molested, the Bombay high court on Friday issued a notice to the inspector general of the RPF, Central Railway.

Reacting to the insensitivity of the Railway Protection Force when a woman commuter approached them to file a complaint after being molested, the Bombay high court on Friday issued a notice to the inspector general of the RPF, Central Railway.

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The court, which has converted the June 21 HT report on the molestation incident into a suo moto public interest litigation regarding the plight of women commuters, has given the inspector general time till July 7 to respond to the notice.

“The insensitivity of the police personnel is required to be looked into,” Chief Justice Mohit Shah said. The RPF personnel had discouraged the victim from filing a complaint after she was molested inside a moving local train. Instead of taking action, the 25-year-old woman was allegedly told by some RPF personnel at Thane not to file a complaint as she had only been molested and not robbed or raped.

The victim had boarded a train from Nerul at 5.20 am on June 19 to go to Thane. As she had told HT earlier, there were no policemen at the station, and as the train started moving, a man jumped into the compartment in which she was alone.

The woman was forced to let the man misbehave with her after he threatened to throw her out of the moving train if she did not comply.

At Juinagar, the woman managed to escape from the compartment and got into another compartment in the same train, which had several passengers.

The woman met her friend at Thane station, and the duo approached the RPF for help. After failing to file a complaint with the RPF, on June 20, the victim approached the Vashi Government Railway Police, who have registered a First Information Report against an unidentified person.