A Bengaluru conductor who had locked up a girl inside a bus for 45 minutes, while police and passersby watched, was finally arrested yesterday. He has lodged a counter FIR, claiming the girl's friend had assaulted him.
"The Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) employee was booked for wrongful confinement and intentional insult on Thursday only after the young woman’s post went viral on social media," The Hindu reports.
The woman had posted on Facebook detailing her harrowing experience and had shared a video which she had shot on her phone when she was locked up in the bus. However, she has since taken a post down, changed the privacy settings of the video, possibly in fear of backlash.
In a new Facebook post, the girl has said, "Honestly, at the end of the day I am a college student, who just wants to finish her studies. I have worked very hard to get here and don't want this to distract me from my studies. I have privatised the video on youtube because I think its going beyond what it should go to."
And in an earlier post, she said that she will not be filing a FIR. "The Deputy Chief Commissioner of Yelahanka has contacted me on their behalf to ask if I want to file an FIR (no guarantee of the time to get this case through, of course) But, due to concerns from family members, I will not be filing this FIR because they feel that the repercussions could be dangerous to me or my fellow Srishti College community. Their arguments are valid and because I love and respect them I am standing by their decision. However i will be consulting the chief of police about what actions should be taken."
The girl, who was accompanied by the male north, had alleged in the earlier post that the conductor of the bus had picked up a fight with her friend who was standing beside her in the middle section of the bus, reserved for ladies. The conductor kept pushing him and when he pushed back, the conductor fell.
Soon, a crowd gathered and the guy panicked and fled. The girl was left alone. She had written, "The conductor... decided to stop by the NES police station (one of the stops the bus goes through) and before I knew it, him and another cop were at my window asking for details about my friend. Reminding them that it was 7:30 in the evening and being a woman it's against the law to take a woman to the station after 6:30pm, I refused to go with them. Especially without a lady constable present."
Soon after, the bus was vacated and the girl found herself alone in the bus. "My refusal angered the judgmental crowd around... and so they began to curse and coax me to go with the police... Before I knew it the bus was empty and the people were standing outside the bus, this is when the conductor decided to lock me inside the bus... police said he wouldn't open the bus till my friend arrives... I was shocked how this was all taking place in the presence of police, outside a police station, on the main road!" she added.
Reportedly, the cops at the police station then asked her to reach an agreement. Where she doesn't file a complaint against the conductor and the conductor doesn't file one against her friend. Back then she had refused and vowed to fight for justice.
However, she has now decided against it, though the conductor has been arrested by the police.
Recently, a Tanzanian girl was stripped an beaten up by a mob in Bangalore after another man of African origin had run a local woman over. Incidents of mob violence are reported regularly in Bangalore. Recently, another woman shared a post on Facebook where she had complained that a group of people had accosted her while she was driving and tried to get her to desert it and run away on a bust highway with many people around. Public apathy, it seems, has become a veritable threat to people who are not from the city itself.
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