In the most insensitive incident, the Mumbai traffic police towed away a private car with a sick woman sitting in the rear seat breast-feeding her seven month old baby at Malad in north Mumbai.
After the video clip of the incident went viral on television channels and social media on Saturday, Mumbai Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Amitesh Kumar ordered suspension of a police constable, pending a departmental inquiry against him.
“It has been prima facie noticed that the safety of woman and the child was endangered in the said incident. Hence, pending enquiry, the constable is being placed under suspension. Decision about departmental action shall be taken after the enquiry report is received," Kumar said.
In an earlier statement, Kumar had said, “The Deputy Commissioner of Police (West) has been ordered to visit and conduct an enquiry into the incident at once. It will be dealt with appropriately and sternly after the report is received tomorrow”.
It was not immediately known as to when the incident took place. Nor the identity of the woman who was breast-feeding her child when her white car was being towed away by the policeis known. It is also unknown as to who was behind the wheels when the vehicle came to be parked at a wrong place.
In the video clip, the eyewitness accompanying the car on the road is heard urging the traffic police constable not to tow away the car with the breast-feeding woman sitting on the rear side of the vehicle.
The eyewitness, who identified the traffic police constable as one Shashank Rane, is heard saying that the police vehicle is towing away with the car for an alleged traffic violation, with mother and her seven-month-old baby on the rear side of the car. “There is no name plate on your shirt. What guarantee is that you are Shashank Rane? If you want to fine the driver or owner of the vehicle, please do so and let her go,” the eye-witness is heard asking the police constable sitting on the front side of the traffic towing vehicle.
At one stage, the mother —in her twenties — is seen breast-feeding her child. She is heard screaming that she is breast-feeding her child but still her vehicle is being towed away. The eyewitness, in response, says, “The woman breast-feeding her kid. What if something amiss happens to her? Who will be responsible if she dies? The people want to know your answer?
At a later stage, the woman flashes a doctor’s prescription and says she is sick. When she is asked whether she knows the name of the police constable in question, she says, “I do not know his name...There was no name plate on his shirt. He removed it.... There were two more vehicles. He did not remove them. But he has towed away my vehicle,” she says.
Without heeding to the pleading by the eyewitness, the traffic police constable is seen talking on his cell phone for a while.