Mentally-ill man held for scaling airport wall to buy alcohol

This picture has been used for representation purpose

A 23-year-old mentally ill-man scaled the walls of the domestic airport and walked till the runway before being caught by the Airport Police on Wednesday evening. When arrested, he allegedly told the police that he wanted to take a short cut to buy alcohol from a wine shop near Kurla station and hence decided to walk across the runway.

However, before registering a case against him, the Airport Police contacted his family.

The family told the cops about his illness and even produced a few medical certificates to prove that he was mentally unstable.

The cops nevertheless booked him under Sections 447 (punishment for criminal trespass), 448 (punishment for house-trespass) and 120 (concealing design to commit an offence punishable with imprisonment) of IPC and later released him.

According to the cops, the man is a resident of a slum near the highway at Santacruz and is undergoing treatment at JJ hospital.

Speaking about the incident, a police officer said, on Wednesday around 3am, that the man scaled the airport wall, which is about 10 feet high from near the Santacruz Highway.

He then tried going to the Kurla side of the airport from the main runway. As he was walking across the runway, the CISF (The Central industrial security force) team spotted him.

He was caught and handed over to the Airport Police for further investigation.

This is the second such incident in less than six months. In August last year, a 27-year-old mentally-challenged man scaled the fencing wall of the airport to walk up to a Bangalore-bound flight and tried to stop it from taking off.

The pilot noticed a man standing in front of the aircraft on the runway and stopped the flight just in time. CISF personnel rushed to the spot and nabbed him.

3AM
Time the youth jumped over the airport wall

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