Iran’s state-run media announced on Saturday that Armita Garavand, a teenage girl who was transferred to the hospital in a comatose state after losing consciousness in the Tehran metro, has passed away.
The official news agency IRNA wrote on October 28 that this 16-year-old schoolgirl “passed away after the failure of extensive medical treatments and 28 days of being in the intensive care unit.”
The news agency further stated, “The brain injury suffered by the victim caused her to spend some time in a coma and she passed away a few minutes ago.”
Other news agencies close to the government, including Tasnim, Fars, and Donya-e-Eqtesad, have also published the same report as their own news.
Armita Garavand, 16 years old, became unconscious on October 1st in Tehran’s Shohada metro station after entering a subway car, and later it was reported that she had fallen into a state of coma.
A video released by the Tehran Subway company shows that shortly after Armita Garavand entered the subway car, she was transferred outside by several individuals while she was unconscious. However, news circulating on social media suggests that security agents pushed her because she was not wearing a hijab, resulting in her head hitting a metal bar and becoming unconscious. After the incident, she was transferred to Tehran’s Fajr Hospital under severe security measures, and no one was allowed to approach her.
The regime’s officials attributed her loss of consciousness after entering the subway car to “a drop in blood pressure,” but human rights sources had raised the possibility of a similar incident to the encounter between the Morality Police and Mahsa Amini.
Immediately after the incident was reported, a journalist who had gone to investigate the matter was detained for several hours, and afterward, state security forces isolated Armita Garavand’s family and blocked all avenues for journalists and reporters inside the country.
Such actions by the government, have raised concerns that the authorities, due to the similarity of Armita’s situation to that of Mahsa Amini, are worried about the emergence of another protest in the country, especially since this new event occurred less than a month after the anniversary of protests that erupted after Amini’s death.
It is said that several non-governmental media outlets in Iran have been “prohibited” from following up on Armita Garavand’s situation and publishing reports about her.
Prior to this, news agencies had announced that this teenage girl had not undergone any surgical procedures since the first day due to her critical condition.
Last week, some Iranian media outlets, without citing the source of the news, claimed with certainty the “brain death” of Armita Garavand.
Last Monday, following the publication of this news, two sources close to Armita Garavand’s family, denied reports of her “brain death” quoting medical sources at Fajr Hospital in Tehran which means that they are banned from discussing Armita’s situation.
The IRNA news agency wrote on Saturday that “according to the official theory of the doctors, Armita Garavand has suffered a sudden drop in blood pressure, resulting in a fall, a blow to the head, followed by continuous seizures, reduced cerebral oxygenation, and cerebral edema.”
Earlier, Amnesty International issued a statement that the regime’s authorities should allow an independent international delegation, including UN experts, to investigate the circumstances that led to the hospitalization of Armita Garavand. Tehran has left this request unanswered.
