|
Mumbai: Three women accused of stealing mobile phones while seeking alms in a Mumbai suburb cast away their clothes to throw off local residents hot on their heels.
The incident took place near the Konkan Nagar tenements in the northwestern suburb of Jogeshwari, said Bharati Patil, a lady police constable at the Dindoshi police station.
Patil said she had just reached her flat in the new MHADA (Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority) police colony after her night shift when she saw three naked women and two children being pursued by a big crowd. She stopped one of the women and waved the menacing crowd to a halt. "I asked her to grab some clothes and then called on the police wireless for help," she said.
The residents later told Patil that four unknown women had first showed up in Konkan Nagar on Monday evening, begging for food and alms. They sneaked into the house of one Vithoba Chavan and fled the scene with four cellphones. Vithoba lodged a police complaint.
On Tuesday morning, three of the women surfaced in the same locality, this time carrying an infant and with a 6-year-old boy in tow.
However, Hitali Chavan, a local resident, recognised them as the same women who had apparently made off with the mobile phones the previous evening and went and alerted Vithoba Chavan.
Vithoba and others from the neighbourhood went looking for the alleged thieves and found them begging in an adjacent lane. When confronted by the angry mob, the panic-stricken trio removed their clothes and attempted to flee the scene.
Although there were nearly 200 people in the crowd, none dared touch the women. The residents then grabbed the minor boy in a bid to stop the fleeing women.
Handed over to police
The boy's mother then picked up stones and inflicted injuries on herself, banging her head on the ground, even as her two associates managed to escape.
Patil handed over the woman she had stopped to Meghwadi police station. Independent sources said the woman created a similar ruckus inside the police station and was allowed to take her children and leave.
|
