Manipuri woman raped, Doctors confirm
Source: The Sangai Express / Courtesy : TNN

Kolkata, October 03 2013: A 28-year-old woman from Manipur, who claims to have a doctorate degree, was allegedly dragged out of a Secunderabad-bound train at the Palasa station in Andhra Pradesh and gang-raped by unknown miscreants.

A few days later, she was found on the Pune Duronto Express by train staff shortly after it left Howrah.

The woman, who was slightly disoriented and spoke incoherently, was finally taken off the train at Tatanagar and later escorted to the Central Institute of Psychiatry (CIP) in Kanke, Ranchi.

Doctors there confirmed that the woman was sexually abused.

There has been some criticism about why the railway or the Government Railway Police (GRP) chose to get her admitted at CIP instead of a place where she could have received better treatment.

After all, the woman is not a lunatic and may have been cured through a few sessions with a good psychiatrist.

The incident happened on August 8.On that day, train superintendent Alok Kumar Roy was in charge of the Pune Duronto Express.

The woman, dressed in a blue salwar kameez with hawai slippers on her feet, was occupying an AC-III tier berth when ticket checker Indrajit Gupta asked for a ticket.

One look at the woman's face and the TC realized that something was wrong.

There were injury marks on her face which was puffed.

The woman spoke flawless English and said that she had no ticket.

Gupta then took her to Roy who has had his share of experience in handling such cases.

Recently, it was this train superintendent who escorted a lost 19-year-old girl from South Dinajpur to Howrah from Mumbai.

In 2009, Roy was thrown out of a train and brutally assaulted by miscreants after he thwarted their efforts to loot members of a marriage party.

The woman told Roy that she and her brother ran away from home as their father used them for experiments and injected medicinal drugs that he apparently developed using snake venom.

The brother-sister duo managed to reach Guwahati and boarded a train to Secunderabad from there.

She was apparently trying to reach Bangalore where she knew somebody.

At Palasa, the woman and her brother were allegedly dragged out of the train compartment by miscreants.

What followed was a nightmare.

The men allegedly gang-raped and then thrashed her brutally.

Finally, they snatched her belongings.

She claimed that she has no knowledge of her brother's whereabouts.

TOI knows the woman's name but has not disclosed it to protect her identity.

"Roy realized the gravity of the situation.

Under railway rules, he could not detrain an unaccompanied woman even if she travelled without a valid ticket.

He alerted the Railway Protection Force at Santragachi and a special escort party was kept ready at Tatanagar.

When the train stopped there for a few minutes to pick up meals for passengers, the RPF party escorted her out of the train.

The GRP were informed but the RPF party, comprising women, continued to escort her.

All attempts were made to find out her address.

She was carrying no document that could provide an identity.

However, she continued to converse in flawless English and behaved like a well-educated woman," a South Eastern Railway official said.

The GRP finally got in touch with the CIP in Ranchi and the woman was admitted there.

Officials came to know from doctors that medical examination had established sexual abuse.

"The last we heard from CIP, nobody has inquired about her," the official added.

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