OSAKA -- An Osaka Prefectural Police superintendent was fired last month after being caught groping a college student on a train, it was learned Tuesday. According to the Kinki Regional Police Bureau, the 50-year-old superintendent, whose name has been withheld, had been on loan to the bureau's police academy, where he taught ethics. He stood behind the 18-year-old student and felt her hip on a train on the JR Kanjo Line near Tsuruhashi Station here on the morning of Nov. 2, the bureau said. The woman dragged the superintendent to the stationmaster's office after alighting at Momodani Station, it added. The bureau quoted him as admitting to police: "I did it on a whim. I regret what I did." Because the victim did not demand punitive measures, police decided not to file the case. They dismissed the officer on Nov. 12. Masaki Yamamoto, chief of the regional police bureau's personnel division, said it had not disclosed the case to protect the victim's privacy and because she did not wish to punish the officer. "We deeply apologize for the shameful incident," he said.
