Chennai: In a horrifying crime, a pregnant woman was sexually assaulted, mercilessly beaten and pushed out of a moving train by a history-sheeter near the Katpadi railway station in Vellore district in Tamil Nadu on Thursday night. The Government Railway Police arrested the accused early on Friday, while the severely injured woman is undergoing treatment at a hospital
The incident triggered strong reactions from political parties with Leader of Opposition Edappadi K Palaniswami and BJP state president K Annamalai alleging there was no safety for women in Tamil Nadu.
Narrating her ordeal, the woman, aged 36, said she had boarded the Coimbatore-Tirupati Intercity Express train on Thursday night. At the Jolarpet Railway Station, the other passengers of the woman’s compartment had alighted.
“I was the only woman in the compartment. I saw a young man boarding the compartment and told him it is a woman’s compartment. He said the train had started moving and he would get down at the next railway station. He kept loitering around and went to the bathroom and emerged after stripping himself. He then tried to strip me, which I resisted,” the woman, with her face bandaged, said in a video from her hospital bed. The video was recorded by an unidentified male.
“I pleaded with him saying I am pregnant. I also told him ‘thambi’ (younger brother) look at me as your own sister and don’t do this to me. But he forced himself on me. I stopped up hoping to pull the alarm chain but he dragged me. I through I could somehow escape and lock myself up in the restroom and pull the alarm chain inside. But he beat me. I kept wildly hitting him but at one point I couldn’t do anything except to hold on the railing (near the door). He broke one my hands, while I held on to the railing. And then, he pushed me out of the train,” she said.
Later, she was taken in an ambulance to the nearest Government Hospital where she was administered first aid and admitted for further treatment.
On receiving information about the crime, the Government Railway Police managed to trace the accused and identified him as a Hemanth (31), a history sheeter hailing from Pooncholai village near K V Kuppam closer to Katpadi. “The woman sustained fractures in her hand and leg and also injury on her head,” a police officer said.
The accused, incidentally, was only a few months ago let out on conditional bail in connection with the murder of a woman from Chennai. Three years ago, the Government Railway Police in Jolarpet had registered a case against him for pushing a woman and snatching her mobile phone and detained under the Goondas Act twice. Further investigation is on.
