Victim is a 23-year-old IT professional based in Bengaluru.
By Dileep Thekkethil
BENGALURU: A 23-year old Bengaluru-based IT professional has written a blog post accusing a diving instructor for having molested her while scuba diving at the Shirur beach near Bydoor in Karnataka.
The unforeseen attack the girl faced underwater has shocked people and her recollection of the incident in the blog takes the reader through the hapless 40 minutes when she had to nod ‘OK’ while her instructor pounced on her like a sea monster.
She wrote, “We descended underwater, meter by meter, and finally reached the sea bed. My instructor had my breathing equipment in his control and my oxygen tank in his hands. But as we swam across the corals, the fish and the fluorescent-coloured plants at the very bottom of the Arabian Sea, his hands were no longer on my diving equipment”
She further wrote “I cringed in shock. I tried to shake his hands away from my body but in vain. The shock slowly turned to fright when his hands began to move across my body. I looked in his direction in despair but couldn’t see him. After all, he was right behind me with both his hands groping me. I was aghast and tried to think fast. I tried to break free but the grasp was too tight. He then signalled asking me if I was okay. I signalled with an ‘OK’. 12 meters below sea level, with my breathing equipment under his control, I didn’t dare show any fear.
The sea was calmer than ever, but there was a hurricane inside my head. He moved one of his hands away from me to adjust his equipment. By reflex, I guarded myself with one of my hands to prevent him from touching me again. In the matter of a few seconds, his hand forcefully found its way back to where he removed it from. My body turned numb with fear. I wanted to scream and shout, I wanted to release myself from his clutches, I wanted to cry, but all I could do was signal him with an ‘OK’ because more than anything else, I wanted to get back to the boat and to my friends, safe and sound. For the next 40 minutes, he took complete advantage of my silence and my helplessness. His hands found their way to every part of my body but they chose to stop only at a few. They pulled me closer to him, caressed me and violated me. All I could do was signal him with an ‘OK’.”
The girl’s underwater ordeal came to an end after she spent over 40 minutes with the molester taking advantage of her and on getting back to the surface she, along with her friends confronted the instructor, who was then made to confess before camera what he did to her undersea.
The girl later lodged a police complaint, taking the video confession of the instructor as the primary evidence; the police nabbed Direndra Ravath, 45, a native of Uttarakhand.
The molested girl, a native of Andhra Pradesh, first approached the Murudeshwara police station to file the complaint and later the case file was transferred to the Byndoor police for further investigation.
Ravath spent 10 days in judicial custody and was later released on bail. A police official was quoted by The Indian Express saying “We have filed a charge sheet against the accused and the trial has begun.”
The police also said that a similar molestation case was filed by another student in Karnataka’s Malpe police station against the same instructor.