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Mumbai, April 24: | | What the police found | | Police investigations have revealed that before raping the girl, More had threatened and assaulted her.
The police also revealed that More—he was riding his bike—spotted the girl and her friend after two private security guards called out to him and pointed to a few cosying couples sitting on the tetrapods.
The girl, who had come to Churchgate to collect details about some defence course with five friends, was allegedly with her boyfriend, a 19-year-old salesboy who works in a Churchgate store.
According to the police, in his statement, the boy said that More shooed the other couples and summoned them to the police booth. ‘‘The boy has alleged that More threatened to book them for obscenity and wrote down their names in a small diary,’’ said a Crime Branch police officer.
According to the boy, More asked him to wait outside and took the girl inside on the pretext of recording her statement.
In her first information report—filed at the Marine Drive police station—the girl has said that More threatened to file a case against the couple.
She has said that though she told More that her grandfather was ailing and her mother was alone at home, he continued to threaten her saying he would lodge a case and inform her parents.
She has also said that More threatened to kill her and hit her on her face.
—Ahmed Ali | TWO days after he allegedly raped a minor inside a Marine Drive police booth, Police Constable Sunil Atmaram More was dismissed on Sunday.
Confirming this, Police Commissioner A N Roy also revealed that the 32-year-old had ‘‘threatened and assaulted the girl before raping her.’’ (see box).
Meanwhile, shocked Marine Drive residents, refusing to forget, continued to protest.
Standing along the city’s most popular promenade on Sunday evening—with black flags, black bands and banners screaming ‘Hang the rapist’—some residents admitted that it was the first time that locals had stepped out to voice dissent.
‘‘This should become a movement,’’ said Sunaina Sadarangani, member of the Federation of Churchgate Residents’ Associations.
‘‘People cannot be cocooned in their ivory towers and say ‘My daughter is safe’. Let us become responsible for our own backyards.’’
On Thursday evening, a few feet away from the windows of posh Marine Drive apartments, a drunk More was caught walking out of the police booth, pulling his pants up, brazenly telling the crowd gathered outside that he was with the Mumbai Police and could not be harmed.
The crowd rushed to the locked booth—used by policemen to rest or change—after hearing the 16-year-old college student’s screams.
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This was More’s first time as a constable attached to a police station. Prior to this, he served with the Local Arms division for close to a decade.
The incident triggered a wave of public demonstrations and left the authorities scrambling to get their act together.
Though the booth—a shattered reminder of the ghastly act—was dismantled, it did not assuage the locals.
‘‘Jail mein muft ki rotiyan kyun tod raha hai? (Why is he feeding on free food in jail?’’ an angry woman demanded to know when representatives of residents’ associations met senior police officials including Joint Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) Ahmad Javed.
‘‘Is he being tortured?’’ another wanted to know. Though Javed tried answering the queries, he could not stop the session from steering towards a free-for-all for stray complaints.
Emotions also ran riot on Saturday midnight when Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone I) Naval Bajaj tried to keep the crowds from spilling over to the main road.
‘‘Go take a hike. People will come out on the streets and you can’t stop them,’’ a Gujarati housewife, her diamond studs glittering in the streetlights, told Bajaj, nearly two feet taller.
‘‘Get More here. Hang him here! We will beat him up,’’ angry residents demanded.
‘‘I found it difficult to stay home after hearing about the incident, so I stepped out with my family,’’ said Preeti Choudhary, a wife and an entrepreneur.
The barrage of questions continued—‘‘What would you have done if your daughter was raped? What if the rapist wasn’t a cop?’’—till an exhausted police inspector retorted: ‘‘Hit me and get it over with.’’ |