A man allegedly masturbated sitting next to a 26-year-old television journalist inside a bus full of passengers passing through south Delhi on Tuesday night, police said on Wednesday.
The woman was returning from Kapashera to her home in Sangam Vihar after work and had boarded the cluster bus operating on route number 517 when the crime happened around 9.15pm on Tuesday.
She alleged she caught the man red-handed after which she beat him with her slippers, restrained him inside the bus and dialled the police control room.
“The bus was full but no one helped me even restrain the man. One man wanted me to stop hitting him. There was just one passenger who tried to help me, but later refused to be a witness,” the woman alleged.
The man was taken into custody by the staff of a police control room van that intercepted the bus near Andheriya Modh.
The man, identified as Mukesh Ranjan Kumar, who works for a tent operator, was arrested and booked for molestation, deputy commissioner of police (south) Vijay Kumar said.
“I was sitting on a seat reserved for women. The man approached me, stood very close and began staring at me and fondling himself,” the woman alleged.
The woman said that she stared back at the man, in a bid to dissuade him but he responded by allegedly unzipping himself and pulling out his private organ somewhere between Vasant Kunj and Chhatarpur, the woman said.
Women in the national capital regularly complain of sexual harassment on public transport or in public places as they are groped and flashed and masturbated at.
In February this year, a middle-aged man masturbated inside a Delhi bus while sitting next to a 23-year-old woman and allegedly tried to molest her. The woman, a Delhi University student, reported the matter to the police with a video of the incident.