Mumbai: Harassed by a man whose age would be close to her father’s, a 20-year-old woman was pushed off a local Mumbai train which led her to falling on tracks and losing her arm, a railway official said on Thursday.
On November 4, the woman was travelling by a local train from Borivali to Virar when the incident took place. She stated in her complaint that the accused – identified as 53-year-old Jitendra Hirmukhe – kept touching her inappropriately, which she called “bad touch”.
Irritated and angered, the woman threw her slipper at him, leading to an altercation.
Fellow passengers tried to intervene, but the accused hurled abuses and threw his own slipper at the woman.
As the train reached Naigaon station, the accused allegedly pushed her off the train, causing her to fall into the gap between two coaches.
“I was going to Naigaon, and there was an uncle who touching me. I thought perhaps someone had bumped into me from behind. But he kept doing it,” the woman, who received 16 stitches in her head after falling on the tracks, told NDTV from her hospital bed.
“When I shouted, ‘What are you doing? Don’t you have a mother or sister at home?’ I swore at him, he swore back at me. I took off my sandal and hit him, he also hit me with his sandal, and then he straightaway pushed me,” the woman said.
As she was trying to climb back onto the platform, the train began to move, and her left arm was caught under the wheels. She sustained severe injuries, resulting in the loss of her arm near the elbow.
“The train I was getting off from – he made me fall right under that train. So then I lost my hand. My head hit the tracks. My hand had to be completely amputed. I lay right under the train,” she recounted the horror.
Hirmukhe was arrested on November 9.
A case was registered against him at Bhayander GRP police station under sections 74 (assault or criminal force against a woman with the intent to outrage her modesty) and 117(2) (voluntarily causing grievous hurt) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).
Section 109 of the BNS, relating to attempt to murder, was subsequently added to the case.
