A Twitter user on Thursday claimed that she faced sexual harassment at the Jor Bagh Metro Station in Delhi. She shared her ordeal in a thread on Twitter and described the traumatising incident about how the man, under the guise of asking her for directions, exposed himself. The woman also alleged that the policeman on duty at the platform did not take any action after she approached him for help.
"While travelling on the Yellow Line today, I faced sexual harassment at the Jor Bagh Station. A man had asked for my help with an address during the metro ride.
I helped him, then got off at my station and sat on the platform to book a cab. The man approached me again at the station under the garb of confirming the address. The man flashed his genitals while trying to show me a file containing the address,” the woman alleged in a tweet.
"I approached a policeman standing on the platform, but he flatly refused to help me and asked me to go upstairs to talk about it.
I was still scared but somehow managed to go upstairs and found other policemen. I asked dem to take me to the CCTV room so dat I could recognise him," she said in another tweet. The woman alleged that when she asked the authorities to do something, they blamed her for creating a scene.
"I asked them to do something about it but instead they started blaming me and said dat I shouldve created a scene & tht theres nothing they can do now since he managed to leave," the woman said in her tweets.
The woman said she is scared to step out of her house and "the incident has completely shaken up my belief that metros are safe." She said it's important that this reaches the right authorities, including the Delhi Metro and the Delhi Police so that they know "how bad their safety measures are".
Replying to her tweets, the Delhi Metro asked the woman to share the exact time of the incident. "Please provide exact time of the incident.
In such cases, commuters are requested to immediately report the matter to the nearest metro staff or contact the customer care centre at the station. They can also call DMRC helpline no. 155370 or CISF helpline no. 155655 so that immediate help can be provided," the DMRC said in its tweet. The Delhi Commission for Women also issued a notice to the police and sought an action taken report in connection with the incident.
Police said the security inside Metro stations is manned by the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF).
“We are taking up the matter with the higher authorities in the CISF to find out why the matter was not brought to Delhi Police's notice earlier,” officials said.
In February 2020, a woman had alleged that she was harassed by a man inside a Delhi Metro train, following which a case was registered.
In a series of Tweets, the woman had claimed that when she was returning to Gurugram on a metro train at night, a man facing her had flashed his genitals.
She had also posted a picture of the man on the microblogging site. An FIR was later field and the accused, a 28-year-old civil engineer, was later arrested.