Police act fast to save man

August 5 was an unusually peaceful day at the police control room - till a call came in that blew the minds of the staff there. A 25-year-old man, jilted by his beloved, was on the other end, telling the woman constable who had taken his call he was going to commit suicide by throwing himself in front of a running train.u00a0The frantic caller disconnected the phone even as Constable Nirmala Walunj tried to persuade him against taking the drastic step.

The woman constable then lost no time in identifying on a cell phone spotting system the location of the mobile from which the man had called, and after determining he was at the Khadki railway station she alerted the local police station.u00a0Within 10 minutes, beat marshals had reached the spot and pulled away the youth from the tracks even as a train approached in the distance.

To the rescue: u00a0Beat marshals SC Mane and DH Dhawale point to the track at the Khadki station from where they pulled the 25-year-old man to safety and foiled his suicide bid. PIC/Krunal Gosavi

"On August 5, I was the in charge of the police control room and our staff was attending calls; it was quite a peaceful day, but at 5 pm our Constable Nirmala Walunj received a call and the person on the other side told her that he had been spurned by his beloved and now was going to end his life by throwing himself in front of a running train," Assistant Police Inspector Wazir Shaikh of the police control room said. "After receiving the call, Walunj was stunned. She tried to persuade him to not take the extreme step, but he disconnected."

The next thing that Walunj did was to spot the caller's mobile location and inform Shaikh. They then alerted the Khadki police station.

"She informed me about the call and the location and we immediately alerted the Khadki police station, and subsequently beat marshals D H Dhawale and S C Mane of the Bopodi division were also alerted," Shaikh said. Beat marshal Dhawale said he and Mane were in the vicinity of the Khadki railway station when they were told to rush to the railway tracks to save the man from killing himself.

"When we received the call, I and Mane were outside the Khadki railway station," Dhawale said. "We ran inside and saw a youth who was walking on the railway tracks even as a goods train was approaching from the Mumbai side."

Dhawale and Mane realised the walker on the tracks was the one they had been sent to save. They ran up to him and pulled him up from the track, foiling his suicide bid. "We took him to the police station and our officers first pacified him," Mane said. "Some time later, we called up his parents." Police Inspector (Crime) Nishikant Bhujbal of the Khadki police station said speedy communication and coordination had saved the young man from becoming another suicide statistic.

"The young man works in a small firm in Narayan Peth and is a resident of R&D Colony," Bhujbal said. "He told us that he was having an affair with a girl, but when she ditched him he felt dejected and decided to commit suicide. It was because of the good coordination and communication between the control room and our police marshals that we were able to save a life."

Bhujbal said it was possible that the man had called the police control room just to show he was going to commit suicide with the intention of teaching his former lover a lesson.u00a0