Commuters who took the law into their own hands when a Tube passenger dropped his trousers in a packed London Underground carriage could face arrest, the Daily Mail can reveal today.
British Transport Police (BTP) believe the naked man, who has since been detained under the mental health act, was assaulted on the District line in east London.
Up to four men stepped in when he repeatedly refused to pull up his pants at 3.30pm last Thursday. He was pinned to the floor and carried off the train before being arrested by an off duty police officer.
But detectives are probing whether the vigilantes committed any criminal offences in the confrontation after he refused to pull up his pants.
BTP has appealed for witnesses to the incident but there have been no arrests over the brawl.
‘The man had been assaulted by a number of other passengers and was initially arrested by an off duty officer, before being detained under the mental health act and taken to hospital’, the BTP statement said.
‘An investigation into the incident is ongoing’.
Passengers repeatedly asked him to put his genitals away and get off the train. He responded by waving his belt and screaming so the group attacked him. British Transport Police said in a statement that the naked man was assaulted
A group carried him off the train and pinned him there, waiting for help to arrive
The Mail revealed how he began yelling after the eastbound train travelled between Upton Park and East Ham.
He then dropped his trousers and put his belt around his neck. His bottom and genitals were on show, sparking anger and revulsion around him on the train, which was busy with children who are on their summer holidays from school.
A passenger stood up quickly confronted him, gesticulating angrily. He politely and firmly told him: ‘You need to get off the train.’ But the man began yelling back: ‘f*** off’, repeatedly.
The commuter said in response: ‘What do you mean f*** off. You need to get off the f***ing train. Now. There are kids on here.’
Footage of the incident showed up to four men kicking and punching the naked man, who was hitting them with his belt. The video then cut to him being pinned to the floor of the carriage.
The man was then unceremoniously carried on to the Tube platform at East Ham and dumped to the floor. He was then pinned down as the commuters tried to alert staff.
It appears an off duty police officer was on the train and performed an arrest and he was taken to hospital.
It is yet another horrifying incident on the Tube, which is run by Sir Sadiq Khan‘s Transport for London (TfL). Since he became Mayor in 2016, Tube crime rates have more than doubled, and today he has been accused of ignoring a manifesto pledge to maintain a 24-hour police front counter in every borough in the capital.
Just last month a brawl broke out on the steps of a packed station – with a screaming toddler ending up on the floor in the chaos.
On Thursday a group of men surrounded the man who exposed himself and repeatedly ordered him to ‘pull your f***ing trousers up’.
A scuffle then broke out.
The naked man was showing trying hit them with his belt and the group was punching and kicking him.
The men snatched away his belt and pinned him to the floor of the carriage while putting his arm behind his back, still with his trousers around his ankles.
Passengers then yelled: ‘We’ve got to get him off.’ He was then removed and arrested.
A group of men were seen fighting each other on the steps of Highbury and Islington Tube station last month
A toddler was seen sitting on the floor on their own while the men threw punches just feet away
The Daily Mail revealed London’s most dangerous tube and train stations earlier this year.
More than 4,100 crimes were recorded in 2024 at King’s Cross St Pancras alone, one of the capital’s busiest terminals. This is more than any other station on TfL’s entire network.
However, when taking passenger numbers into account, the most dangerous station is Poplar on the Docklands Light Railway (DLR), near Canary Wharf.
Statistics collated by the British Transport Police (BTP) and TfL show 46 crimes were committed at the stop on the self-driving line last year. This equated to a rate of 58.7 offences for every million passengers.
It was followed by Cockfosters, the northern terminus of the Piccadilly line, with 57.4 crimes per million passengers, and then King’s Cross St Pancras with 51.4.
Since Sir Sadiq became Mayor in 2016, Tube crime rates have more than doubled, from nine per every million journeys to more than 21 last March. Similarly, offences have risen on the Overground, DLR and Elizabeth line, which opened in 2022.
The Mail’s analysis comes after shock statistics laid bare the ever-worsening crime epidemic plaguing commuters – who have fallen victim to violent, racist, sexist and anti-Semitic assaults.
One woman was even whipped in the face with a belt in a sickening attack at Green Park station last January.
Liban Ahmed, handed a suspended 18-month prison sentence for the attack, was caught on film shouting as he moved up and down the platform, trying to avoid two men trying to grab him.
In a fit of rage, the 27-year-old lashed out with his belt catching a woman trying to board the train.
Mansoor Ahmed, 30, was last month jailed for 26 months and slapped on the sex offenders register for a decade after he sexually assaulted two women on the Tube.
On September 6, 2020, Ahmed sexually assaulted a woman walking up the stairs at Gloucester Road station and just a few months later on November 20, he assaulted another woman walking down the steps at Charing Cross.
Jaya Pathak, who campaigned for more action against sexual harassment on the tube after she was assaulted last year, told the Daily Mail that the situation has ‘getting worse’.
Ms Pathak, 27, was harassed by a man who continually starred at her for several stops, then ‘pretended to be drunk’ and rested his head on her shoulder on a Victoria line train to Walthamstow last April.
‘He tried to make it look as if he was nodding off as an excuse to touch me, when I pushed him off, he laughed it off and kept starting again,’ said Ms Pathak, who works in foreign policy.
She said that the man even beckoned to her to get off the train at Blackhorse Road, the stop before she was due to get off at the end of the line.
As the station was platform was virtually empty at the terminus, she felt unsafe as no staff could have been there to put a stop if things turned sour.
Ms Pathak has called for TfL to staff emptier end-of-line stations as a deterrent to would-be sexual predators, who may not act if someone else is watching.
Homeless man Brwa Shorsh, 24, pushed an innocent stranger, Tadeusz Potoczek, onto the tracks at Oxford Circus underground station just seconds before the train pulled in, in February 2024.
Mr Potoczek had been hurrying home to catch a flight and was looking at the arrivals board when he was attacked in what prosecutor Sam Barker described as ‘the thing of nightmares’.
The Kurdish migrant had claimed he’d targeted the 60-year-old in ‘revenge’ after thinking Mr Potoczek had given him a ‘dirty look’. Fortunately Mr Potoczek, a postman, missed the electrified rail and was helped back onto the platform by a passer-by who rushed to his aid.
The driver had put on the emergency brake and his train was just four seconds away from hitting the victim.
Shorsh, who has accumulated convictions of assault and indecent acts since arriving in Britain in 2019, had denied trying to kill his victim and claimed he did not know a train was arriving at the time.
In July last year that year he was found guilty of attempted murder by a jury at Inner London Crown Court after just 32 minutes of deliberations and he was jailed for life with a minimum term of eight years.
Liban Ahmed whipped a woman in the face with his belt at Green Park Station
Predator Mansoor Ahmed, 30, was last month jailed for 26 months and slapped on the sex offenders register for a decade after he sexually assaulted two women on the Tube
Jaya Pathak, 27, was sexually assaulted on the tube last year and has called for more staff at stations to deter would-be sexual predators
A Jewish man wearing a kippah suffered a display of vile anti-Semitism on the Northern Line last March, when a vaping passenger said: ‘Your religion kills Muslims.’
The victim filmed the argument, where the passenger said: ‘You’ve done a lot… You’re wearing the hat.’
The man, who shared the footage with the Campaign Against Antisemitism accused the vaper of being anti-Semitic.
Across all Underground, Overground, DLR and Elizabeth line stations (excluding stations outside the London fare zones), 38,000 crimes were reported to the BTP in 2024, according to their data.
This is the equivalent of 104 per day.
Data includes crimes committed at the stations themselves and those committed on trains either at or arriving into that station.
Terminus stations can be over-represented in the on-train crime figures because if the exact location is unknown, it may be recorded as having happened at the end of the line.
After King’s Cross St Pancras, the fourth most dangerous Tube stop is Epping, Essex, the north eastern terminus of the Central line, with a rate of 49.
Fifth is Upminster Bridge, east London, on the District Line with a rate of 48.6.
The major London terminals of Finsbury Park come in sixth and seventh with rates of 46.1 (885 total crimes) and 36.5 (1,825 total crimes), respectively.
However, several Elizabeth line stations outside the main London fare zones (1-9) — Taplow (76 per 1m), Twyford (71), Burnham (62), Reading (60) — have even higher rates. We have excluded these stations and all outside the London fare zones from the rankings, although you can still see them on the map.
Brwa Shorsh has been jailed for life after pushing a man on to the tracks at Oxford Circus underground station
Daily Mail analysis suggests that the most dangerous line on TfL’s network is the Overground’s Lioness Line, which runs between Euston and Watford Junction, with a rate of 28 per 1m passengers.
A total of 2,533 crimes were recorded at stations on this line, which services around 90m people a year.
Next is the Victoria line with 26 per 1m (11,700 total crimes) and the Metropolitan with 20 per 1m (7,000 total).
The safest line in London is the Docklands Light Railway (DLR), with a crime rate of 8.3 per million passengers, followed by the Suffragette (8.7) and Jubilee (9.7).
These figures have been calculated by adding together the total crimes and footfall for each station which serves each line, then using those numbers to calculate the rate per 1m passengers.
