Pritishree Dash, a college student from Rourkela, Odisha had to face a haunting situation few days back on a train journey towards Kochi from her hometown Rourkela. Timely and intelligent action from Pritishree saved her from what would have been the darkest day in her life.
Pritishree Dash is a law student pursuing her legal studies in National University of Advanced Legal Studies (NUALS), Kochi. She went to Rourkela, which is her hometown on the closure of her college for semester end. It was on journey back to Kochi from Rourkela after her holidays that she had to face a terrifying situation. Pritishree boarded train number 22837 also known as ‘Dharti‘, which runs from from Hatia (HTE) to Ernakulam Jn (ERS). “I was travelling in the B9 compartment of third AC class. I had an upper berth to myself and during the day I chose to sit on the lower berth. The train was not at all crowded, apart from that there were only two other passengers in that compartment other than me.”
The AC compartments of Indian railway generally have a caretaker; it’s this caretaker who distributes the pillows, blankets etc. to the passengers within the compartment. Pritishree was sitting on the lower birth and the caretaker was sitting across her seat on the side lower birth. “Everything was fine until he started staring at me in a mean and disgusting way, initially I just tried to ignore it but he continued stalking me and it was so disturbing and uncomfortable for me”. Even after hours of evil staring by an unknown person in an unknown location, Pritishree didn’t lost her nerves
instead she did a Whatsapp video call with her dad and showed the activities of that caretaker to him. Her dad worried about the situation his daughter shared Indian Railway helpline numbers, but she tried all the number but didn’t get any response from them. “I called all the numbers given by Dad, but couldn’t get any response I felt myself in life threatening situation and as a last resort I decided to post my concern in Twitter and I tagged Ministry of Railways in my post “.
Normally we would have thought that no one will respond to someone’s distress post in twitter, but within 30 minutes after her twitter post help reached Pritishree. “Within half an hour, two TTE came to me asking my situation, they instructed the care taker to leave from the compartment. They took written complaint from me citing all which happened, after that the railway police inspectors came and visited me and asked me if I need any other support from their side. I was so overwhelmed by the prompt response which I got from Ministry of railways”
After this experience Pritishree Dash urge to every woman to react and respond and take the necessary steps when they feel threatened or harassed in any manner. “Some people will say it’s unnecessary do such things but in the end it’s your life not theirs, it’s you who suffer so prevent it rather than regretting on something which happened”
