Abductors of woman passenger who had jumped off bus arrested

HT, 26 December 2016, Darjeeling: The police on Monday arrested the driver and the conductor of a bus for allegedly trying to abduct and molest a woman in Cooch Behar town. The victim jumped out of the moving bus suffering injuries. Her family had lodged a police complaint.

“We arrested Hafizur Rahaman, the driver, and Mrinal Sarkar, the bus conductor, on Monday afternoon. They are from the Kotwali area of Cooch Behar,” said Anup Jaiswal, Superintendent of Police, Cooch Behar. Both are in their mid-30s.

The police had come under fire for the delay in nabbing the culprits. The road from Cooch Behar to Dewanhaat was blocked by residents on Monday morning. The roadblock was removed later after assurances by the police of arrests. The accused were absconding.

The victim, in her mid-30s, is a resident of Dinhata sub-division of Cooch Behar district. She is an employee of a private bank. She commutes by bus daily to work.

The victim said that on Friday around 6pm on her way home she boarded a bus at Cooch Behar bus stand. The victim realised she was the lone passenger. When the bus reached Rajbari area in the heart of the town, the conductor bolted the door and even changed the route board to “Reserved.”

The victim requested the driver to stop the bus as she wanted to get down. Instead of stopping the bus, the driver accelerated. The conductor told her the bus would not stop. Seeing no other way she jumped out of the moving “green and white” bus. The bus sped away.

Passersby then admitted the badly injured victim to MJN Hospital. Later she was shifted to a private nursing home where she is recovering from her injuries.

On Saturday, the family of the victim lodged a complaint at Kotwali police station in Cooch Behar town.

Cops after identifying the bus questioned the owner of the bus on Monday. Late in the afternoon the missing duo were arrested.

Namita Burman, district president of All-India Women’s Cultural Association, has demanded that police mobile vans be placed in all major thoroughfares from dusk to dawn to prevent recurrence of such incidents.

Crimes against women continue unabated in Bengal raising serious concerns. On May 29, a Nepali national was allegedly abducted and gang raped by four men for three hours in a moving vehicle at Salt Lake area near Kolkata.

On July 8, a female passenger pressed charges against an Uber cab driver in Kolkata for misbehaving and threatening to rape her. On August 30, two Ola drivers allegedly picked up a 12-year-old pavement dweller, gang-raped her in the vehicle on the Park Circus flyover and killed her and threw her body in the canal below.