Tehran: Two well-known human rights activists told the media that a teenage Iranian girl was in serious condition in the hospital after slipping into a coma after what they claimed was a confrontation with authorities on the Tehran subway for disobeying the hijab law.
Since Armita Geravand's case is so delicate, there are worries that the 16-year-old may share Mahsa Amini's fate, a 22-year-old woman whose death in a coma while in the morality police's care last year provoked months of widespread outrage.
The Iranian-Kurdish rights group Hengaw released a photo showing Geravand asleep at a Tehran hospital where she was transported following the event, despite the fact that authorities have refuted assertions made by rights groups that she fell into a coma after a clash with police who were enforcing the Islamic dress code.
"We are following her case closely. She is in a coma at the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital and her condition is critical ... her relatives said there is a heavy presence of plain clothes men at the hospital," one of the activists in Iran said.
The second activist said security forces had forbidden Geravand's parents from posting her picture on social media or from talking to human rights groups. CCTV footage, shared on IRNA, showed Geravand without mandatory hijab accompanied by two female friends walking toward the train from the metro platform. Upon entering the cabin, one of the girls is seen immediately backing off and reaching for the ground, before another girl is dragged unconscious from the cabin by passengers.