Public Molestation of A Woman

By Oyindamola Thomas

 

 

A dirty drama played out during a bus ride to Victoria Island on Thursday. I noticed how a lady who sat at the extreme on the same seat as me, got so uncomfortable by what I didn’t initially know that she kept adjusting her sitting position. At some point, with stern looks on her face, she sounded a note of warning  to a man who sat directly behind her on the last seat. "Please stop making me uncomfortable with your hand coming so close," she said.

As the bus continued in the ‘bumper to bumper’ traffic situation, the lady who couldn’t bear what was happening to her just shouted “Please keep your hand to yourself. I wonder why you have decided to rest your hand on my buttocks!”

Acting as if nothing had happened the man looked away and pretended to be on his phone. But that was not going to be the last of his try. Next step, he placed  his head on the backrest of the seat in front and tried his luck again without knowing that I had fixed my eyes on the direction of his hand, just as did the other passengers who occupied the last seat with him.

Again, the man moved his hand quietly and rested it on the lady’s buttocks attempting to make a squeeze when thunderous voices descended on him,” Eh! So this was why you entered this bus, just to come and squeeze women on their backsides?” But before he could utter a word, the lady landed him a dirty slap on the face. “Let us drag him down and serve him good beating” suggested one of the passengers. “But that could result to another killing from a mob action”, said another passenger.

 At this point confusion had set in as blows and knocks were flying from different passengers, forcing the bus driver to pull over beside the Federal Palace Hotel. As the man in question was being dragged out of the bus and everyone following, I noticed that there had been a thin slit from something like a razor blade across the lady’s dress. I raised the alarm immediately and behold when a check was done, a razor blade was found on the floor of the bus right where the man had sat.

Sweating like someone confined inside an oven, the man could only plead for forgiveness, crying that “it was handiwork of the devil.”  Poor lady, her pain was now how to manage herself in a destroyed dress that exposed her underwear.  There was not much that I could do, but to share in her shame and pain. I had to walk down the road with her to link Kofo Abayomi, which was  her destination. Ofcourse, the guy found the nearest escape route.

Afterall, he claimed it was 'the devil's handiwork'. What do you think?