Three arrested for stalking 22-year-old woman on scooters in Mumbai

Within eight hours of a 22-year-old woman tweeting about being stalked by three men in Andheri (West) after midnight, the Mumbai police caught the accused. The police then traced the woman through social media to get her to file a complaint, which led to the arrest of the men on Friday.

According to the Amboli police, the incident took place late on Wednesday when the woman, a writer, was at a restaurant with two friends — a 23-year-old video producer and another woman friend in her 20s.

The three accused — Jaysingh Chavan, 48, Ganesh Jadhav, 40, and Ravindra Jadhav, 38 — were staring at her from a nearby table. Both the Jadhavs have a criminal record, said police.

“When one of the woman’s friends went to the washroom and another stepped out of the restaurant for some time, one of the accused made an obscene hand gesture at her. The woman ignored it and at 12.45am, left the restaurant with her friends,” said a police officer.

“When we left the restaurant, the three accused followed us to a medical shop on two scooters,” according to the woman’s complaint.

She told the police that she tried to click a picture of the accused, after which they passed lewd comments at her. They lingered around the medical shop and around 1.30am, the woman and her two friends got an autorickshaw and left the spot.

According to the police, around 2.50am, the woman tweeted about the incident, following which a team led by Amboli police inspector Daya Nayak swung into action. With the help of the first part of one of the scooters’ registration number mentioned in the tweet, the police zeroed in on a scooter that belonged to a person from the area.

“When we reached the house of the owner, we were told the two-wheeler had been sold to Chavan. We caught Chavan and upon interrogation he confessed to the involvement of Ganesh and Ravindra.” said an officer. All the three were detained by around 11am.

But Nayak had to find the complainant as a formal FIR had to be registered so that the accused could be arrested. The police through her social media profiles, got in touch with one of her friends from Chandigarh, who told the woman about the police action.

The complainant took to Twitter and thanked Mumbai police and Nayak. She tweeted “Mumbai police have been exceptionally helpful in making us feel safe. We have filed an FIR.”

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First Published: Nov 17, 2018 00:51 IST