A teenager is allegedly fighting for her life in hospital after Iranian morality police beat her for not wearing a hijab.
CCTV footage shows 16-year-old Armita Gheravand being pulled from a Tehran metro train after she collapsed at Shohada station on Sunday.
Activists said Armita fell into a coma after being “brutally physically attacked” by agents enforcing the hijab law.
Sources claim she was pushed while boarding a train without a headscarf and “hit her head on an iron pole.”
Human rights group Hengaw said the boy was being treated at Tehran’s Fajr Hospital under heavy security and family members’ phones had been confiscated.
On Tuesday evening, campaigners posted on X (formerly Twitter) a photograph taken by staff of Armita lying unconscious in bed and hooked up to breathing tubes.
Armita’s case is sensitive and raises fears that she could suffer the same fate as 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, whose death in the custody of morality police sparked months of nationwide protests.
Arita’s parents were interviewed by the state news agency Irna “in the presence of senior security officials,” Hengo claims.
Irna quoted her mother as saying they had seen CCTV footage and accepted it was an accident.
In the heavily edited video, the woman states: “I think my daughter’s blood pressure dropped, I’m not too sure, I think they said her blood pressure dropped.”
Masoud Dorosti, managing director of Tehran Metro, also denied there was “any verbal or physical conflict” between “Armita, passengers or metro managers.”
He told Irna: “Some of the rumors about a confrontation with metro agents… are not true, and CCTV footage refute this claim.”
The Iranian journalist was briefly arrested on Monday when she went to the hospital to inquire about Armita’s condition, local media reported.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Bärbock said: “Once again, a young woman in Iran is fighting for her life.
“Just because she showed her hair on the subway. It is unbearable.
“Armita Garavand’s parents have no place in front of cameras, but they have the right to be at their daughter’s bedside.”