Railway police have finally arrested the ticket inspector accused of harassing a 27-year-old woman passenger at the KR Puram train station in eastern Bengaluru last week.
V Santosh Kumar, 42, a deputy chief ticket inspector at the KR Puram railway station, allegedly misbehaved with the woman from West Bengal as she got off the Howrah-SMVT Bengaluru Humsafar Express (Train No 22863) on March 13. He wasn’t posted on the train.
The Humsafar Express had halted at KR Puram to cross with another train before chugging to its final destination.
She decided to get off the train at KR Puram, an unscheduled stop, so she could easily reach home in Marathahalli. She carried several pieces of luggage.
Kumar demanded that she produce her ticket as soon as she got off the train. She said she had the ticket on her mobile phone and asked him to wait.
But Kumar got impatient. He pulled her and tried to pierce a pen into her face.
Fighting tears, she demanded to know why he had pulled her.
Kumar yelled back at her “This is my job. Show me the ticket and go. This is not your house. You bl***y,” he is heard saying in a video posted on Twitter.
A group of men rushed to the woman’s rescue and confronted Kumar. “He’s drunk. Call the police,” one of them says.
They caught him and called the police. The South Western Railway (SWR) suspended Kumar pending an inquiry.
The woman later filed a complaint with the railway police. S K Soumyalatha, Superintendent of Police (Railways), confirmed Kumar’s arrest.
(Published 20 March 2023, 20:58 IST)
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