MUMBAI: The Annampali family was devastated when they realised that they had left behind a bag of jewellery—worth Rs 17 lakh—on the Chennai Express recently. They spent the next few hours, panic-stricken, carrying out searches at various railway stations. But thanks to a quick-thinking constable, Ishwar Jadhav, they got back their valuables.
Jadhav tracked down the train to a yard, squeezed in through an emergency window and managed to trace the bag.
“We had presumed some passenger must have walked away with our bag. My mother was overjoyed at getting back the jewellery,” Anand Annampali told TOI on Sunday.
I just did my duty, says GRP constable; worthy of Ishwar name, says family
The Annampalis are Andheri residents and had gone to their hometown in Telangana to attend an annual festival. They were returning home on Chennai Express. Early on Friday, they alighted at Dadar station and then took a local train to Andheri.
“On reaching home, we realised that the bag with the jewellery was missing,” Anand said. But the family was not sure where they had left it. Some of them went down to Andheri station and enlisted the help of security agencies to check CCTV footage. Others went to Dadar station. After finding out that the train terminated at CSMT, relatives approached the GRP there and lodged a complaint.
“Our team decided to check the train at CSMT, but it had already left for the yard at Mazgaon. Without wasting time, one of our constables, Ishwar Jadhav, went over to the yard,” said GRP senior inspector Mehboob Inamdar. The train was being washed at the time and all its doors and windows were shut.
Jadhav thought for a minute and started tapping on the windows, looking for a cavity. He found the emergency window and managed to get it open from the outside. With the help of staff from the yard, Jadhav squeezed inside and went into coach A/4. He scanned every inch of the coach and located the bag under the seat in a corner. It contained 326gm of gold, including necklaces, bracelets, rings, earrings etc. The bag was returned to the Annampali family.
“The family told me that I was worthy of my name (Ishwar),” the constable smiled, adding that he had only done his duty. The contents of the bag—several times Jadhav’s monthly earnings—were intact. The constable has been rewarded Rs 1,000 by the CSMT GRP police station.
