Railway security on Mumbai’s suburban locals has been an issue, particularly for women commuters while travelling late at night. An 18-year-old girl who was travelling with her mother on a Churchgate-bound local from Kandivali was the latest victim, after a thief snatched her Rs 38,000 mobile phone and dragged her till the footboard until she let go. He then escaped with the phone, Hindustan Times reported.
Railway security on Mumbai’s suburban locals has been an issue, particularly for women commuters while travelling late at night. An 18-year-old girl who was travelling with her mother on a Churchgate-bound local from Kandivali was the latest victim, after a thief snatched her Rs 38,000 mobile phone and dragged her till the footboard until she let go. He then escaped with the phone, Hindustan Times reported.
The sequence of events lasted all of 20 seconds, but was a terrible ordeal for Miloni Parekh, a fashion designing student, who was travelling with her mother on Saturday night at 10.30 pm. Parekh told the daily that everything happened in a 20 seconds – the time a local takes to halt at a station.
The women got off at Bandra and approached the Government Railway Police (GRP). The women lodged a complaint against the unidentified thief, who Parekh described to the police. Sunilkumar Jadhav, senior inspector, Bandra GRP, said Parekh, in her statement said the accused snatched her phone from behind. “We have registered a case of theft and assault used to commit theft under sections 379 and 356 of the IPC. We are trying to identify the robber,” he told HT.
Crimes on suburban trains have increased by 800%, with 496 registered in 2017 versus 62 in 2016, Mumbai Mirror reported.
According to the Indian Penal Code, an offence is registered under Section 390 as robbery only when the victims is hurt or threatened during the process of committing the theft. Senior officials from GRP explained that the spike in robbery figures is the result of proper registration of complaints.
The most common offence on the suburban network in Mumbai is mobile-snatching, in which the passengers is often hurt as the accused tried to run away with the phone. The other way of attempting cell phone thefts is by hitting the passenger with a stick, known as phatka. Most cases of cellphone-snatching was not recorded earlier, and only a missing report used to be registered earlier in such cases instead.
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