BEIJING (TIP): Chinese social media users have pulled out details of the December 2012 Nirbhaya case in New Delhi to draw comparisons with assault and molestation of a woman in Henan province in central China. Microblogging sites like Weibo and other Internet platforms are giving vent to angry Chinese protesting against the thrashing and molestation of a 22-year-old girl inside a moving bus last week. The anger is largely directed at bus passengers and the driver who did nothing to stop a 51-year-old man from molesting the girl in public, and beating her up when she resisted. She lost consciousness during the assault but the driver did not stop the bus despite the huge commotion. “I am furious with the bus driver.

Why didn’t he respond to her desperate cries for help?” asked the girl’s father in Dahe News in Henan, expressing strong disapproval of passengers refusing to help her during the attack on December 5. The girl had managed to call her father before the attacker snatched her mobile phone and pinned her to the bus seat. The assailant and two of his accomplices dragged her out after the driver stopped under pressure from passengers. Chinese media routinely report rapes and molestations in India, projected as a country notorious for crimes against women. This is why netizens with a fair knowledge of the Nirbhaya case in Delhi are recalling the December 12 rape and drawing comparisons. The difference, they said, is there were no passengers in the Delhi bus, and it was being driven by an accomplice of the assailant. Also the Henan girl was unaccompanied. Anger was directed at the lenient punishment to the assailant: 15 days of administrative detention. But the bus driver lost his job.