“Can you stop doing that? Can you stop doing that,” Nandita can be heard asking a bearded man seated next to her in a bus in Kerala. The man, identified as Savad Sha from Kozhikode, was allegedly caught masturbating while seated between two female passengers in the bus. He fled as soon as he got a chance, only to be caught and handed over to the police by the conductor and co-passengers. The incident came to public attention after Nandita Sankara, who is an actor and a model, uploaded a video on social media detailing the incident and thanking those who helped her through the ordeal.
Nandita says in the video that she was travelling from Thrissur to Kochi when the accused boarded the bus at Angamaly and sat between her and another woman, on a seat reserved for women and pregnant persons. The man then apparently tried to make conversation with Nandita, who was seated near the window, asking her where she was headed and whether a traffic block was to be expected on the way. “Just about two seconds after I responded, I felt his arm rubbing against my waist,” she says, adding that she soon noticed that his other hand was meanwhile rubbing his private parts behind the cover of his bag.
“I was disgusted, so I turned away to open the shutter of the window and look outside. But when I turned around for a second time, he had his zip open with his genitalia out, and he was masturbating,” Nandita says.
In the video she recorded of the incident, she can be seen asking the accused to stop what he was doing, while the latter acts clueless. He subsequently gets up from the seat and begins to defend himself as the bus conductor gets involved. The conductor then asks Nandita if she wants to file a complaint, and when she responds in the affirmative, tells the driver to head to the police station.
Later in the video, the accused is seen engaged in a scuffle with the conductor outside the bus, eventually pushing him away and running across the road. As per reports, a few passengers soon chased the accused and caught him, before handing him over to the police.
Thanking the conductor, driver, a law student who helped her file the complaint, and other passengers in the bus who stood by her during the ordeal, Nandita says, “I am happy that I reacted. When he opens that zip again, he should remember my face and be scared.” The Nedumbassery police arrested Savad on Tuesday, May 16.
Trigger warning: Nandita’s Instagram post can be accessed here.