FORTY-EIGHT hours after she was spotted lying naked in the first class ladies’ compartment of a local train at Titwala on Saturday night, a woman was found with just a shawl wrapped around her body at Platform No. 7 at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) on Tuesday morning. She was admitted to St George Hospital where she died in the evening. The police are yet to ascertain her identity and if she was raped.
The woman was spotted lying naked in a CST-Titwala local on Saturday night and had been missing since then. According to Senior Police Inspector of GRP at CST, B A Thombare, a constable found her lying unconscious at Platform No 7 towards the Byculla-end at 7.40 am today.
“We admitted her to St George Hospital where she died in the evening,” said Thombare.
The Commissioner of Police for Railways, A K Sharma, however, said the CST police found the woman at 9 am and she was admitted to hospital at 10 am and she died at 5.50 pm. Deputy Commissioner of Police for CR Vasant Koregaonkar said that the CST police found the woman at 9.30 am.
“When we found her, the three people who had seen her earlier confirmed that she was the same woman who was seen naked on Saturday night. So, we took her to hospital,” said Sharma.
According to Sharma, so far the police don’t know anything about her background or family as she could not give any statement. “She appears to be a beggar,” Sharma said.
When asked why the railway police took so long to trace her even though she could have been found on Saturday night itself, the police didn’t have any answer. “We had deployed 25 constables,” said Thombare while Sharma put the number at over 50. “She could not be taken out of the compartment at Titwala as the train started to chug on,” Sharma said.
When asked where the woman was for the past two days, Koregaonkar said, “We are trying to investigate where she was.”
“We will see if it’s a rape case. So far, nothing of this sort has come out,” Sharma said. “The woman looked nine months’ pregnant but she was not. She could have been suffering from some illness pertaining to stomach. There are no bruises or wounds on her body, so there is no possibility of any assault or rape,” Koregaonkar said.