South Korean student molested in India—police

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KOLKATA, India—Three men chased and allegedly molested a South Korean student on a bus in eastern India, police said Monday, in the latest incident to raise fears over women’s safety in the country.

The 20-year-old college student was attempting to board a crowded bus in Kolkata early Monday when three men tried to drag her out of the vehicle, police official Subhendu Barik told AFP.

“She managed to get into the bus. The youths also boarded the bus and stood behind her” and then allegedly “grabbed her buttocks and breasts”, he said.

The computer science student jumped off the bus with the men in pursuit and she ran towards a traffic official who helped catch one of the three and brought him to a nearby police station where she filed a complaint.

Female commuters in India face daily sexual harassment in the country’s congested buses and trains, where men easily outnumber women.

The fatal gang-rape of a 23-year-old student by six men on a moving bus in the Indian capital New Delhi last December highlighted a lack of safe transport for women in the country of 1.2 billion people.

Police said they were searching for the two other men accused of molesting the South Korean woman who is studying in the city.

The arrested man later appeared in court and was remanded in police custody until April 2, Kolkata deputy police chief Sumanjit Roy told AFP.

Monday’s incident comes just days after a British tourist jumped off a hotel balcony in the Taj Mahal city of Agra in a bid to escape an alleged sexual assault.

Earlier this month, a Swiss cyclist was gang-raped in Madhya Pradesh while a South Korean tourist was allegedly drugged and raped in the same state in January by the son of the owner of a hotel where she was staying.

Nationwide protests over the deadly attack in New Delhi put pressure on Indian authorities to pass a tough new anti-rape law last week which also includes a maximum three-year jail term for sexual groping.