The Kurar police on Tuesday arrested a 31-year-old man who allegedly offered money to minor girls and women asking them to perform lewd acts. The accused was nabbed and thrashed by local residents and then handed over to the police.
The accused has been identified as Maqsood Alam Shaikh,
a resident of Pathanwadi area of Malad (East). Police said Shaikh is into bodybuilding and also runs a Chinese food stall.
The incident occurred around 2.30pm on Tuesday when Shaikh was standing outside a public toilet in the area he lives in. When a minor girl passed him, he offered her Rs. 50 and asked her to get intimate with him. The scared girl shouted for help, alerting locals who caught hold of Shaikh. The police were informed and they took Shaikh into custody.
Police said during the course of the investigation they found that Shaikh’s main target was minors between 12-15 years as targeting older women would get him into trouble. But, the police said he had also targeted older women on some occasions. He would wait for the area around the public toilet to become secluded and then station himself there.
“On some occasions he would attract the attention of the victim and then unzip his pants. The scared victim would run away and then Shaikh would wait for another girl. He would also call the victim close and then offer her money to get physically intimate with him. He has been doing these things for the past five days. The girls are so scared that some of them have stopped going to that particular public toilet,” said Subhash Dafle, senior police inspector of Kurar police station.
Dafle said, “It appears that Shaikh is mentally unstable. He lives with his parents and is unmarried.”
Shaikh, who has been arrested under Sections 354 (outraging the modesty of a woman) and 509 (intent of outraging the modesty of a woman) of the Indian Penal Code, will be produced in the court on Wednesday.