'Groper' chased to his death by angry rail commuters
in Tokyo
A COMMUTER who allegedly groped a college girl on a crowded train collapsed and died after being chased along a platform by fellow passengers in Osaka, Japan.
The 40-year-old office worker fled from the train as it pulled into a station after the student screamed and accused him of groping her bottom and legs.
Four male passengers, including two off-duty policemen, gave chase, bringing him to the ground as he tried to escape. He died later in hospital from a heart attack.
The incident took place on the morning rush-hour express on the Hanwa Line into central Osaka - a spectacularly crowded route that has become one of the most notorious hunting-grounds of Japan's reviled 'chikan', or railway gropers.
Instead of ignoring the girl's plight, as Japanese commuters routinely do, fellow passengers decided to take the law into their own hands.
The incident has highlighted the widespread problem of groping on trains in Japan. But the ferocity of the other passengers' reaction has also sounded alarm bells.
Male Japanese commuters appear to have been stirred to a new mood of chivalry by a hugely popular TV drama, in which a woman falls in love with the man who rescues her from a drunken chikan.
Until yesterday, that mood had not translated into vigilante-style incidents. (© The Times, London)
