Over 25,000 personnel, including SRPF, CRPF, RAF, BSF staff, 18 paramilitary companies and 47,000 city policemen were manning the streets, and yet such a strong force could not avert the molestation of a girl at the Bharatmata junction near Curry Road station during Ganesh Visarjan on Wednesday.

The ‘safe’ city has now become a breeding ground for perverts. The reason for such increasing number of street crimes is the Mumbai police’s inefficiency to learn lessons from their mistakes. Unless the force introduces proper crowd management plans, such incidents will continue to occur at crowded places. In 2007, revellers at Gateway of India had brought major shame to Mumbai by stripping and molesting a girl on New Year’s Eve. Exactly a year later, a mob groped and molested two girls outside a five-star hotel in Juhu, again on New Year’s Eve. Just a year ago, in August 2012, some female police personnel could not protect themselves when the crowd went berserk during the Azad Maidan riots.