For this former journalist and aspiring sociologist, it was a journey back home after four months.
But her overnight trip from the city to Chennai proved to be a ‘nightmare’ as she fell prey to a molestation bid in the hands of a fellow passenger, on Monday.
The 23-year-old boarded an AC sleeper bus run by a private bus operator from Mehdipatnam in the evening.
She had her peace till her fellow passenger took advantage the moment she slept.
“The bus started around 7 p.m. and there was a dinner break around 10 p.m. Till then I did not have any interaction with my co-passenger. After dinner I watched a movie on my iPad and fell asleep only to be awakened at around 1 a.m., to groping by the fellow traveller,” she recounted.
Showers blows
Horrified, she raised a hue and cry and showered blows on the passenger, first with her hands, and then with her slippers.
“I beat him with all my strength. None of the other passengers came to my support,” she recalled.
She managed to grab her camera to click a few pictures of the molester, even as he tried to cover his face. Amidst the commotion, the molester asked the driver to stop the bus in the thick of night on a desolate highway and slunk away.
“My pleas to stop him from fleeing fell on deaf ears. The driver and conductor did not even get down looking for him. Instead, the driver just started the bus,” she said.
In the morning, she collected the name and phone number of the passenger from the bus conductor and tried to reach the bus operator to lodge the complaint against inaction of the staff, but to no avail.
“Even after so much of debate, the country is still not safe for women. Not only did people try to ignore my outrage, they did not take the initiative to save a girl in distress,” she rued.
FB post goes viral
While she is yet to lodge a police complaint, she poured her woes on social media site Facebook and the post went viral with more than 100 shares in a span of four hours.
