Moga, Punjab 30 April (TIP). A 14-year-old girl in India has died and her mother has been seriously injured after they were allegedly thrown from a bus by three men who had tried to sexually assault them.

In Box : (There are conflicting reports over how the two women came off the bus. NDTV reports that the women were thrown onto the road, while the Times of India claims the women jumped off the moving vehicle in order to escape the men.)

The incident began when a man on the bus allegedly started harassing the mother and daughter, who were travelling with the girl’s 10-year-old brother on a bus in Punjab’s Moga district on Wednesday evening

The girl and her mother begged for help as a group of men tried to molest them on a moving bus in Moga, 170 km from Chandigarh. And finally, they were pushed off, thrown from the bus onto the road. The girl was declared dead after being taken to hospital and the mother is in hospital with severe injuries. Her little brother, who witnessed the entire incident, was dropped off a little distance away.
“No one helped. They first pushed my daughter off the bus, then me,” the girl’s 38-year-old mother, who was unconscious for hours at a district hospital, said.

What amplifies the horror is that the bus is linked to Punjab’s first family, the Badals. Documents show that Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal’s family owns 5,000 shares in Orbit, the company that runs the bus. Asked whether the bus belongs to his family, the Chief Minister said, “Unfortunately it does. But I have never taken interest in it. A Himalayan blunder has happened. A great sin. It could have happened on any bus. It is sad regardless of whether it happened on a truck, bus or jeep.”

Three persons, including the bus conductor and cleaner, have been arrested for the incident that provoked comparisons to the brutal gang-rape of a young medical student on a moving bus in Delhi in 2012.

Other passengers on the bus didn’t react at all, the mother alleged.

When she ran to the driver and begged him to stop the bus, he allegedly ignored her and drove even faster. After around 20 minutes of harassment, the woman and her daughter were thrown out.