On Thursday, a woman and other passengers on a bus stormed the Kottakkal police station in Malappuram around 3 am on Thursday, holding another co-passenger, who was accused of molesting her when she was asleep.
While the bus was heading to the police station, the woman, a popular activist working with the transgender community in Kerala, started a Facebook live video, explaining what happened to her on the bus. She boarded the Kallada Travels bus to Kasaragod on Wednesday night, and so did the man, who has been identified as 23-year-old Abdul Munaveer. According to the woman, Munaveer occupied the berth opposite her berth.
“He noticed me when he entered the bus. There were some issues with the curtain, but the operators fixed it for me. I went to sleep after that,” she is heard saying in the video.
The woman said she felt a hand rubbing her back. “My t-shirt was a little loose. I first thought since I was in deep sleep, I might be dreaming. I opened my eyes and went back to sleep. But I soon realised that it was a hand rubbing my back. I immediately yanked his hand, got up and raised an alarm,” she said in the video, adding that the man first feigned ignorance, pretending that he was sleeping.
She turned on her phone camera and started recording the video, where she is seen confronting the man. On hearing the commotion, the other passengers also woke up. “When the driver decided to make the man deboard, I insisted that I want to go to the police station,” she said.
The bus headed to the Kottakkal police station, where she filed a complaint against Munaveer.
“He told us that the was only trying to adjust the curtain of his berth,” a police official told TNM. The man has been booked under section 354A (Sexual harassment) of the Indian Penal Code and section 119(a) (punishment for atrocities against women, for any person who performs, in public places, any sexual gestures or acts degrading the dignity of women) of the Kerala Police Act, 2011.
He will be taken to the district court later in the day. Meanwhile, the woman continued her journey to Kasaragod on the same bus.