Indian teen stripped, has head shaved on train for stealing bag

Girl’s father tells court his daughter was mentally unstable after developing a brain tumour

A 17-year-old girl was stripped and had her head shaved by passengers on the Howrah-Jodhpur Express in India after she was caught stealing a bag.

"The girl was caught with a bag, but passengers took the law into their own hands and cut off her hair,” Lalit Tyagi, an Agra station officer said. “She was also strip-searched. They misbehaved with the ticket train examiner, too, who came to her rescue."



"Passengers verbally abused me,” Ticket Train Examiner (TTE) SK Sharma said. “They accused me of being her associate when I asked them to hand over the girl to Government Railway Police (GRP). It was sheer barbarism, the way they treated the poor child. Women stripped her, while a few men assaulted her. They cut her hair."

The girl was sent to judicial custody on Tuesday after facing court. GRP filed complaints passengers made against the girl, along with one from the Ticket Train Examiner (TTE) who made complaints against the six passengers. The passengers have been booked for “voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from his duty,” as well as assault and criminal intimidation.



The girl’s father told the court that his daughter had been under treatment for her brain tumour because of which she became mentally unstable."I told the judge that she has a brain tumour and is being treated at the Saifai government hospital,” he said. “She became mentally unstable because of that, but the judge did not pardon her."

Her father claimed she had left her home on Sunday after her parents said they would not give her money to visit a local fair. The family claimed the court had ignored her age as written on her school leaving certificate and tried her as a 19-year-old.



Last month, an Indian woman was attacked with a baton after she resisted men who allegedly attempted to molest her. Footage of the incident, which took place at an Uttar Pradesh marketplace showed the woman surrounded by a group of men, one of whom attacked her with a stick when she resisted another who reportedly attempted to grope her and remove her dupatta when she asked for directions.

This article originally appeared on RT.