Bengaluru: Mob assaults, molests engineering graduate; cops fail to help

Bengaluru: In a horrific incident, a mob of 25 locals allegedly assaulted and tried to molest a Jharkhand-based BE graduate from Dayananda Sagar College of Engineering, in full public view on August 12 near the college in Kumaraswamy Layout. But what followed was even more shocking as the mob surrounded the victim, locked her two-wheeler and snatched away the keys, even as none of the passersby came to her rescue.

To add to her misery, when a profusely bleeding Prerna, who along with her friend Bhavesh, approached the Kumaraswamy Layout police, she was allegedly made to wait for over an hour to register the complaint.

The alleged assault took place near the college campus around 2.30 pm. Prerna, 22, who hails from Ranchi, shared her anguish on the social networking site Facebook under hashtag PMOindia and Narendra Modi. The victim posted the details of her horror story on the August 15 morning.

Prerna was heading home after college, where she had gone to enquire about job placement, when another two-wheeler whizzed past her vehicle.  “A 45 to 50-year-old man, who was riding the vehicle (KA-03-TL-203), was about to crash into my two-wheeler. I moved left to avert collision, but I lost control and fell down. As I got up and sat on my scooter, the man started abusing me. When I tried to drive away, he held onto my scooter from behind. But I managed to escape,” she told Deccan Chronicle.

But, what followed next, shocked Prerna. “As I was trying to get away, the man started screaming ‘catch her, catch her’. A man on the road pushed my bike and I fell again, and sustained bruises. The man, who was abusing me, charged at me and hit me on the head with his helmet. Soon, I was surrounded by a mob, including auto drivers and shopkeepers, who without assessing the situation started blaming me. As I noted down the two-wheeler registration number and started moving away, around 25 to 30 men surrounded me, locked my scooter, snatched vehicle key and started touching me inappropriately.”

She said, “When I told these locals to back off, they made fun of me. One of them said, ‘Let me see how you escape from here'. Nobody came to my help. Everyone seemed to have fun watching my predicament. I asked the people around to give me their mobile phone to make a call to the police, but nobody wanted to get involved. I walked a little further and requested a mehndi wala, who agreed to give me his phone and I called my friend Bhavesh, who stays nearby. When Bhavesh arrived at the spot and tried to negotiate with the mob, they threw punches at him. One of the locals also punched me in the nose and kicked me in the back.”

Her ordeal did not end there. When she and her friend reached the police station, none of the officers refused to help them. “The police didn’t come with us to the scene for over one hour and made us wait at the station, asking us to repeat the incident. We were not provided first-aid for three hours until we warned the police,” she said.