RailEnquiry

That there isn’t adequate security for women using the Mumbai suburban railway has hit a raw nerve again. A 25-year-old man allegedly molested a woman travelling in the ladies’ second-class compartment of a Central Railway train between Vikhroli and Kurla stations on Wednesday evening and even refused to let her alight. Her struggles were far from over. When she managed to get off at the Kurla station, she couldn’t find a single policeman on the platform. It was only after she managed to catch the attention of ticket-checkers on the platform and told him about her assault was she directed to the railway police station to file a complaint. The police said the 22-year-old woman, a resident of Ghatkopar who works in a private company at Vikhroli, was waiting for a train around 7.40pm on Wednesday at the Vikhroli station when Ritesh Walavalkar, whom she is acquainted with, met her on platform 2 and tried to strike up a conversation with her. She, however, refused to speak to him and boarded a CST-bound slow local train. There were only a few woman commuters in the compartment and, taking advantage of this, Walavalkar reportedly boarded the ladies’ second-class compartment. He then started passing lewd comments. He molested her while the train was passing between the Vikhroli and Kurla railway stations, refusing to let her alight at the Ghatkopar station, the woman said in her written complaint. When the shaken woman finally managed to get down at the Kurla station, there was not a policeman in sight whom she could complain to. She narrated her harrowing experience to ticket-checkers on the platform, who directed her to the Kurla railway police station on platform 1. Based on her complaint, the government railway police arrested Walavalkar from his house in Ghatkopar, PD Babar, inspector of Kurla railway police station. “He was booked under sections 354 (outraging the modesty of a woman) and 509 (word, gesture and act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).”