Yesterday had a crazy experience about so called secured and never sleeping city called – Mumbai. Was driving back home in my usual course from office and was having usual traffic experience on the street. This gets usually complemented by never ending work of roads, flyover, wired networks and what not. Fast moving life of Mumbai turns extremely slow when you drive in this city on so called Highways where speed never crosses 30km/hr. While having this usual traffic experience, a long, humongous Red colored creature started getting close to me. I could sense his desperation to move ahead in my rear window and side mirror and thought I should allow him as his intentions were scary. Suddenly a man pops in front of this creature and barely escaped from this creature. I allowed that man to pass through the street safely and this Red colored monster bashes my car from the back right side scratching & denting all the way breaking my side glass mirror into pieces. I got out of my car and had a conversation with the chauffeur and his colleague and they both were confident and arrogant. Confident because it was a usual incident for them probably one in an hour and arrogant may be because they know nothing is going to happen to them looking at their past experiences.
This humongous creature was our BEST Bus which normally are known for there for their rash driving. I thought of taking an initiative to teach this guy a lesson and went to Bus Depo to lodge a complaint against him. There I met a Depo Head who was perfectly resembling the Train Chacha of movie Jab We Met. He started giving me gyan about the BEST company and gave irrelevant details. Finally after a really long conversation I came to know that I need to move to Police station to lodge an FIR if I want to take the complaint forward. Though I knew that Police is not that helpful as I had experienced it earlier in my mobile theft incident but then too I thought of trying it one more time. Went to the police station and there I saw a typical Babu kind of attitude. These guys are really difficult to move. Some how I managed to get it started and the incidents which were happening along with me were making me even more crazier.
This starts with the police catching a Macdonald delivery guy for not wearing a helmet and were making that poor guy feeling scared that now they are not going to give back your company bike. This delivery guy who was of around 18 years of age was in a fix as he didn’t knew what to do. They took his huge delivery parcel ordered by some customer and were making him feel as he will be hanged now for not wearing a helmet.
On the other table someone was lodging a complaint for his missing brother and while the taking the concerned identifiable information was disinterestedly asking about the nature of the missing individual as if he is going to meet all the people in Mumbai and find him through his nature like “ ya this guys is pretty Hasmukh, he is the one”. The entries were taken in a fat register which I feel even will get missing in next few days.
On the third side the Inspector had summoned one guy for interrogation and even without asking any question he slapped him almost 15-20 times. I guess this is their usual warm up exercise. He had a belt kind of instrument fitted with a handle at one end used to smash the people. This comes with an astonishing sound effect which makes the viewers even more tensed. The victim was a driver from UP and hearing that police started bashing him even more.
When all these was happening almost at the same time, one man ( a fairly looking good citizen ) came to police station to inform about a dead body which was lying few meters away from police station. I got shocked and thought now there will be some CID type action. I was really annoyed to see, those guys before taking any action first took that informer into questioning and noted his details and other irrelevant stuffs. He kept on saying that it is a hit and run case and there is a chance that the victim may be alive. But it was like police guys wanted the victim to die so that they don’t have to hurry up. Instead of just going out and checking what is the matter these guys called the central control room to send a team to check out for the matter. One of the police constable started searching for the concerned person in central department.
And since I was looking a decent fellow whom they can look upon for money, the police was more interested in my car papers, PUC documents and if any is missing they can instantaneously ask for money. But to all their efforts were waste as everything was in place and they were forced to lodge an FIR. And without even seeing my car and the damage he lodged the complaint against Best Bus. Then he took me to the Xerox shop for getting a Xerox copy of my FIR and asked for 200Rs for two copies of FIR. I took the ledger from him and got it Xeroxed myself for 2Rs which annoyed him to the core.
Till I was leaving the police station, everything was in the same situation as I came. Macdonald delivery guy’s parcel was taken by the police official for self-consumption. Missing guy complaint was still getting lodged with full of irrelevant questions harassing his relatives. That UP driver was still getting bashed by different police officials. And with regards to the most important Hit and Run Case, those police officials were still struggling for the right number to call upon. This made me look back and see whether we all are really living in a metro city. I have left the hope of any action also as these people are not moved even by a dead body what they will look upon my small car incident. Many thought came in my mind as I got disturbed by other incidents happened at police station. We all are guarded here in Mumbai yet all are unsafe, heavily crowded yet alone in case help is required, 24x7 alive city but cannot be reached to a single person in case of any exigency. And we say we are developing, god knows where the hell is development !!!
Reference:
Bus No: MH 01 L 9337
Place of Incident: Opposite Goregoan Station
Bus Depo: Opposite Goregoan Station
Police Station: Vanrai Police Station
Date: 2nd April 2012
Time: 9.35 pm
