Mumbai: On January 5, 2014, techie Esther Anuhya, 23, was killed by a petty thief, Chandrabhan Sanap, shortly after he offered to drop her home on his motorcycle. He had seen her coming out of the Lokmanya Tilak Terminus (LTT) at Kurla. Anuhya was struggling to find a ride to her destination in Andheri. When she accepted his offer, he took Anuhya to an isolated spot and strangled her when she resisted his robbery attempts. Her decomposed body was found off the Eastern Express Highway in Bhandup on January 16, 2014. To avoid a repeat of tragedies like this and with women’s safety in mind, Mumbai Police had embarked on an initiative of maintaining a diary at the LTT police chowky, in which women commuting late at night would enter details like their phone numbers and addresses, as would the driver of the autorickshaw or cab and the vehicle number too would be noted. A senior police officer said the idea behind this move was to instil fear among the auto and cab drivers.
Till February 2015, the diary was maintained, but as time went by, women declined to fill in the details in the register as they were in a rush. Eventually, the practice took a backseat and diminished with time. However, five years later in 2019, when an officer from the Mumbai traffic police randomly visited LTT to check on unruly autorickshaw and cab drivers, he saw the diary gathering dust. After ascertaining the facts of the matter, he insisted this practice be revived. Shahaji Umap, deputy commissioner of police (traffic headquarters), said, “The diary will now be maintained as we want to ensure women’s safety, as well as ensure cabbies and auto drivers toe the line. Moreover, this diary will be randomly checked by traffic officials, as part of the initiative.
This initiative was started by Bhushan Kumar Upadhyay in 2014, but unfortunately, it took a backseat. It was time to bring it back in action.” Until 2016, Lokmanya Tilak Terminus (LTT) continued to have dimly lit areas near the terminus, where rogue autorickshaw and taxi drivers would fleece passengers by rigging meters or taking longer routes. In the beginning of 2017, when the railway authorities revamped the station, policemen were deployed around the station, leading to a drop in the rate of serious crimes.
- PRIYANKA NAVALKAR
