A man tore off the ear lobe of a 47-year-old woman while pulling out her gold earrings on a busy road in west Delhi, leaving her grievously injured and in need of plastic surgery, police said on Thursday.
The incident occurred near Uttam Nagar (east) Metro station at around 6pm on Tuesday, when Vandana Sharma, who lives nearby, was returning home from a relative’s funeral in north Delhi’s Shakti Nagar. “She got off a bus near Uttam Nagar bus terminal and was walking back home when she was targeted,” said her husband Manoj Sharma, who works for a private firm.
Vandana Sharma said that someone approached her from behind and used both his hands to pluck her earrings from her ears. “One earring immediately tore through my left ear and came off. Since the other earring wasn’t coming off, he kept pulling it till the ear lobe tore,” she said, adding that the man appeared to be in his twenties
“The pain was such that for a few seconds I lost my voice and couldn’t scream for help. Holding both my ears, I sat down on the road for the next few minutes. The attacker fled on foot, right in front of my eyes,” she added.
The robber’s escape was captured by a CCTV camera installed nearby, but he remains unidentified as the footage only showed his back, said Santosh Kumar Meena, additional deputy commissioner of police (Dwarka district). “A case under section 394 of Indian Penal Code pertaining to causing hurt during robbery, has been registered at Bindapur police station. We have formed a special team to identify and catch the suspect,” Meena said.
Vandana Sharma says no one helped her or chased the robber, though there were people around. “All they did was point out to me that my ears were badly torn. I walked alone to a nearby hospital for treatment,” she said.
Though police figures show that snatchings and robberies in the city dipped in 2017, compared to the previous year, snatchers have been turning violent of late.
Last August, a woman died after motorcycle-borne snatchers pulled her off a running auto-rickshaw in south Delhi’s Hauz Khas in an attempt to steal her handbag. In the same month, a Delhi University student needed 38 stitches when a snatcher attacked her with a sharp object in north Delhi’s Timarpur.
Last year, Delhi’s police commissioner, Amulya Patnaik, had told HT in an interview that the Delhi Police had proposed an amendment to the existing law that deals with snatchings, which he described as the city’s biggest law-and-order concern. If the proposal is accepted, a crime like the one involving Sharma could land the accused in jail for up to 14 years.