Krishnagar, July 13: A Class VI girl was molested in a bus on her way home from school after two passengers hurriedly got down to avoid the trouble of protesting.

The culprit was an 18-year-old helper of another bus, whom the Nadia girl remembers more because of a tattoo on his arm that read Bubai.

Police in Nadia’s Nabadwip, about 100km from Calcutta, identified him as Bubai Banerjee. He is missing.

A student of a Christian missionary school in Krishnagar, the girl had taken the Nabadwip-bound bus around 1.30pm yesterday.

As the bus reached Nabadwip station, all passengers except three got off.

“The boy in jeans and T-shirt, who boarded the bus at the station, stood in front of me in the deserted bus. Then he sat next to me. By this time, the next stop came and the conductor got off,” the girl said.

Then the youth held her in an embrace and started kissing her. “I was stunned. He was holding me firmly and kissing me. I cried out for help but the other passengers did not respond. I did not know what was happening. Then the boy started tearing off my uniform, with one hand covering my mouth,” she said.

“The torture went on for minutes. Then the bus slowed down as it approached Nabadwip town the other passengers jumped off the run- ning bus.”

The driver apparently did not realise what was happening behind him. The conductor’s helper did. But he stood at the door and looked the other way. The girl said she “became desperate” when the other passengers fled. “I bit the boy’s wrist and jerked myself free. The boy jumped off the bus and started running. I got down, too. But he had fled by then,” she said.

The girl approached some local traders who knew her father, a garment dealer. They took her home, where she broke down. “My daughter is traumatised. She is refusing to go to school again,” her father said.

The inspector in charge of Nabadwip police station said the driver and his helper were questioned. “Both said they did not see what what went on behind.” Two raids on Bubai’s house on the outskirts of the town proved futile.

Additional superintendent Subrata Mitra said the helper’s name could be included in the FIR as an accomplice.