A woman travelling on a scooter with two children in Pune was punched in the face by an elderly man in a car who was allegedly angry because he wasn’t given space to overtake. The woman’s hair was pulled and she was punched twice with such force that her nose began bleeding extensively.
Posting a video narrating her ordeal, Jerlyn D’Silva, a digital content creator, claimed she was on the Pashan-Baner Link Road on a scooter with her children and a man in a car had been speeding behind them for nearly 2 km. She said she stuck to the left of the road, not wanting to come in the car’s way, but the man overtook her and stopped in front of her scooter.
A case has been registered against the man, who has been identified as Swapnil Kekre.
“He got out of the car very furiously. He punched me twice and pulled my hair. I had two kids, he didn’t care about them. How safe is this city? Why are people behaving like maniacs? I had two kids with me, kuch bhi ho sakta tha (anything could have happened)… A woman helped me,” Ms D’Silva says in the video, with blood around her nose and mouth.
Speaking to NDTV, Ms D’Silva’s uncle, Vishal, said she called him after the incident and he went to meet her at the hospital.
“She told me the man in the car assaulted her for no reason. The scooter didn’t touch his car. He probably did it just to show how powerful he was. He got off the car, asked her why she was riding the way she was and started assaulting her. The man’s wife was with him but she didn’t try to stop him. The children weren’t hurt physically but they were scared and screaming,” he said.
Vishal said a woman took Ms D’Silva to the hospital and the police also helped her. The man and the woman, he said, were taken to the police station.
An official of the Chaturshringi Police Station said a First Information Report (FIR) has been registered against the man.
The incident occurred exactly two months after a 17-year-old allegedly drunk boy rammed his Porsche into two 24-year-old techies in Pune, killing them on the spot. He is out on bail.
Earlier this week, the 25-year-old allegedly drunk son of a politician hit a poultry truck while speeding in his SUV in the city, leaving its two occupants seriously injured. He fled but was caught and a case has been registered against him.
