Mumbai: A 42-year-old salesman was arrested on Thursday morning for allegedly masturbating in front of a woman’s home in Chapel Road, Bandra.
According to the Bandra police, the incident occurred at around 1.30pm on January 4 this year.
The police said that they learnt about the matter when the complainant called them in a panic to report that a man was masturbating outside her door. The accused has been identified as Ali Ahmed Syed, a college dropout. The police said that his wife left him three years ago and he lives alone.
A team was rushed to the building but the man was gone by the time the police reached the spot. The police then recorded the woman’s statement and registered an FIR against unidentified persons.
“The complainant told us that her doorbell rang and she looked through the peephole to see who it was, which was when she saw the accused engaged in the act. We checked the CCTV footage of the building. While it had captured the crime, the accused’s face was not visible due to the poor quality of the camera,” said an officer with the Bandra police station.
The investigating team then checked four to five other privately installed cameras outside the building and found all of them to be out of order. The police then prepared a sketch of the accused based on a description provided by the complainant and provided it to a team of officers and constables, which was tasked with patrolling the locality round the clock.
{{/usCountry}}The investigating team then checked four to five other privately installed cameras outside the building and found all of them to be out of order. The police then prepared a sketch of the accused based on a description provided by the complainant and provided it to a team of officers and constables, which was tasked with patrolling the locality round the clock.
{{/usCountry}}“We suspected that the accused might return to the area, as predators are known to target the same victims again, especially if the victims do not react strongly the first time. The victim in our case was too traumatised to react when she saw him outside her door and we believe that the accused would not know about the FIR. True to our suspicion, the accused returned to the area on Wednesday evening, and we took him into custody,” said the officer.
After preliminary inquiries established the involvement of the accused in the case, he was placed under arrest in the early hours of Thursday morning.
Syed has been charged with outraging a woman’s modesty under the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Senior police inspector Rajesh Devre, Bandra police station confirmed the arrest and added that no previous cases against Syed had come to light in inquiries so far.
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