INCIDENT OF ENDANGERING HER SAFTY BEGAN IN GENERAL COMPARTMENT; WOMAN JUMPED OFF WITH HER HUSBAND AND 10 MONTHS OLD BABY

A 25-year-old woman jumped off a moving train near Dima station with her husband and 10-month-old daughter after some men were bent on the gang-rape her, said the railway police. No arrest has been made yet.

The Railway Protection Force (RPF) said the couple jumped off the Mahananda Express with their child near a jungle in West Bengal’s Rajabhatkhawa area after about a dozen co-passengers, who were allegedly drunk, molested the woman and threatened to “tie him up and gangrape his wife” thisTuesday.

“These men started harassing her after the train crossed Siliguri. The incident of endangering her safety began in the general compartment …and the family was alone with these men,” said an official.

The family was travelling in the general compartment and on their way to their hometown Dinhata in Coochbehar district from Ghaziabad, where they live.

According to the police, the group of men escaped after reaching Alipurduar. Additional Security Commissioner (RPF) Mukul Chandra Medhi said that railway authorities were coordinating with the local police to arrest the accused.

Deputy commercial manager, Alipurduar-NFR, Basanta Das said: “The family said that these men were continually threatening them. They molested the woman and told the husband that they would kill him if he protested. They spoke to people on the phone in front of the terrified family and kept telling them about the things that they would do to the young woman and her husband.”

According to the officials, the group started harassing the family around 10:30 pm.

In her complaint, the woman alleged that the family alighted from the train at the New Hasimara Railway station and asked the guard for help. The guard, she claimed, told them to file the complaint at the next station, Alipurduar.

Officials, however, denied the charge. The family then went back to the New Dinhata railway station.

A senior doctor at the Alipurduar Railway Hospital said that both the baby girl and her father (32) suffered fractures in their skulls, while the woman escaped with minor injuries.