Delhi: Woman dragged along road by scooter during snatching incident; Video goes viral

New Delhi: A hospital staffer was injured after she was dragged along a road by a scooter when she caught hold of a man who snatched her mobile phone at a traffic signal here, police said on Friday.

Though the snatchers escaped at that moment, police after examining CCTV camera footage identified and apprehended one of them, a senior officer said.

The accused has been identified as Vipin (21), a resident of Gurmandi in Model Town, police said. Vipin was riding pillion and it was his jacket that the woman had grabbed and was dragged around 100 metres, before she fell near a car, they said. The incident took place around 5:30 pm on Thursday in northwest Delhi’s Shalimar Bagh area, when Payal, a 23-year-old front office assistant at Fortis Hospital, was returning home from work, police said.

Bystanders took her to the hospital where she was treated for injuries to her knees. She was discharged on Thursday, they said.

Information about the snatching was received by the Shalimar Bagh Police Station around 6:40 pm on Thursday, and teams were formed to apprehend the suspects, they said. Deputy Commissioner of Police (northwest) Usha Rangnani said the man driving the scooter has also been identified and police teams are searching for him.

 

During interrogation, Vipin said that after stealing the scooter from Kamla Nagar, he and his associate reached Shalimar Bagh, where they snatched the mobile phone of the woman, who was waiting at the traffic signal near the hospital, according to police. Giving Vipin’s case history, police said he is named in a case under the Excise Act registered at the Model Town Police Station and is known to be a drug addict.

This year till now, the northwest district has arrested or apprehended 470 snatchers and 357 robbers. Out of which, 89 have been arrested or apprehended by the Shalimar Bagh police station, police said. Rangnani said a case under sections 392 (punishment for robbery) and 34 (common intension) of the Indian Penal Code has been registered at the Shalimar Bagh Police Station.

A video of the snatching has gone viral on social media.

The incident took place on a day the country remembered ‘Nirbhaya’, a 23-year-old physiotherapy intern was gang-raped and savagely assaulted in a moving bus in south Delhi on December 16, 2012. She died a fortnight later.