Teenage Girl in a Coma Dies After Hijab Assault

Armita Geravand, the 16-year-old girl who fell into a coma on October 1 after being assaulted at a Tehran metro station for not wearing a headscarf, has died, state media has reported. 

Reports indicated that Armita, who had boarded a metro train with two school friends, and whose headscarf was draped over her shoulders, was pushed by a woman wearing a full Islamic chador, or head and body covering.

“Unfortunately, brain damage to the victim caused her to spend some time in a coma and she died a few minutes ago,” the official IRNA news agency reported, earlier today.

Geravand was admitted to Fajr Military Hospital on October 1 after sustaining the incident at the Tehran metro station.

Authorities say the teenager fainted due to "a loss of blood pressure," but reports suggest that she was physically assaulted by a hijab enforcement officer.

Armita's friends took her out of the train before it continued on its route, witnesses said, adding that the assailant disembarked at the next station. 

CCTV footage shared by government-affiliated media showed Armita without a hijab accompanied by two friends walking toward the train from the metro platform. 

Upon entering the carriage, one of the girls is seen backing off and reaching for the ground, before another girl is dragged unconscious from the cabin.

Footage from inside the train has not been released, despite evidence suggesting that the train car had CCTV cameras.

The death of Geravand could revive countrywide protests sparked by the September 2022 death of the 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman Mahsa Amini while in the custody of “morality police” for allegedly wearing her headscarf "improperly."

Her death triggered protests that spread across the country and rapidly escalated into calls for the overthrow of Iran’s four-decade-old Islamic theocracy.

Authorities responded with a brutal crackdown in which more than 500 people were killed and over 22,000 others were unlawfully detained, according to activists.