MUMBAI: Quick action by the police helped stop a 15-year-old schoolboy from ending his life by drowning himself at a lake in Aarey Colony on Friday.
When the boy’s father reached Vanrai police for help, assistant inspector Srirang Chintaman overheard him narrating a phone conversation with his wife. She told her husband that their son, who had left home after penning a ‘goodbye note’, had called her from a passerby’s phone and told her not to look for him and bade her goodbye before hanging up. Chintaman dialled back on the passerby’s phone and asked for his location. On learning that the youngster was in Aarey Colony, Chintaman directed sub-inspector Sangram Gawde to rush to Aarey with the boy’s father and complete the paperwork later. “It was peak hour and Western Express Highway was clogged with north-bound traffic. To save time, Gawde took me on his bike. En route, Chintaman alerted Aarey police,” the boy’s father wrote in his letter of appreciation to the police chief, Sanjay Pandey, expressing gratitude to the police team that rescued his son.
Assistant inspector Ulhas Kolam from Aarey police station was looking around a lake near Chhota Kashmir when Gawde and Chintaman reached there. “They found my son seated by the lake soaked and covered in mud. By that time, my son had already jumped into the water once and changed his mind,” the letter said.
Kolam said he and his colleagues were anxious as the lake was deep and dotted with dense vegetation. The teenager was taken to Aarey police station to change and the zonal DCP counselled him and his parents. “We will stay indebted to the 3 policemen...I request that this work be acknowledged in their service record,” the letter said.
