A teenager is allegedly fighting for her life in hospital after being beaten by Iran’s morality police for not wearing a hijab.
Armita Geravand, 16, is seen on CCTV being dragged off a Tehran metro train when she collapsed on board at Shohada station on Sunday.
Activists said Armita fell into a coma after being subjected to “a severe physical assault” by agents enforcing the hijab law.
Sources claim she was pushed when she got on to the train without a headscarf and “hit her head on an iron pole”.
Human rights group Hengaw said the youngster is being treated at Tehran’s Fajr hospital under tight security and that phones of family members had been confiscated.
On Tuesday night, its campaigners posted on X, formerly Twitter, what it said was a photo taken by staff of Armita unconscious in bed and connected to breathing tubes.
Armita’s case is highly sensitive and raises concerns she might face the same fate as Mahsa Amini, 22, whose death in the custody of morality police sparked months of nationwide protests.
Armita’s parents were interviewed by state news agency Irna “in the presence of high-ranking security officers”, Hengaw alleged.
Irna quoted her mother saying that they had seen the CCTV footage and accepted that what happened was an accident.
The woman states in a heavily edited video: “I think my daughter’s blood pressure dropped, I am not too sure, I think they have said her pressure dropped.”
Masood Dorosti, managing director of the Tehran metro, also denied that there was “any verbal or physical conflict” between “Armita, passengers or metro executives”.
He told Irna: “Some rumours about a confrontation with metro agents... are not true and CCTV footage refutes this claim.”
An Iranian journalist was briefly arrested on Monday when she went to the hospital to inquire about Armita’s condition, according to local media reports.
Germany’s foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said: “Once again a young woman in Iran is fighting for her life.
“Just because she showed her hair in the subway. It is unbearable.
“The parents of Armita Garawand do not belong in front of cameras, but have the right to be at their daughter’s bedside.”
