A student of Chittagong University has allegedly been sexually harassed on a moving shuttle train that runs between the city and the campus.
The third-year student from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities claimed that the men who had harassed her were not university students but “outsiders”.
The incident occurred at around 7:15pm on Thursday.
The student got on the shuttle train which was scheduled to leave Chittagong rail station at 5:30pm but it left at 7pm.
There were two other elderly men in the same compartment who got down before Iftar time. Meanwhile, two more men entered the compartment, and at one stage, they tried to start a chat with her, according to her narrative.
“While they were roaming, I asked them if they were university students. They said they came from Bahaddarhat.”
When the train stopped at a station and started moving again, one of the duo grabbed her mouth with one hand and her head with the other. She tried to scream and get free but fell on the ground. She was still trying to remove their hands so that people could hear her scream. Eventually, she managed to scream loud and the duo alighted from the train.
“At one point I thought I was going to die,” she said.
After returning home, she found scratches and injuries on her face, and a wound above one of her eyes. Since the incident, she has been very upset and going through a mental breakdown.
CU Proctor-in-Charge Dr Shahidul Islam said: "This is a very terrible incident. But the student has not told us anything yet. We are trying to get in touch with her.”
He added that police members were supposed to be in every compartment of the shuttle train.
