Man jumps off the sea link; second suicide in 3 weeks

Less than three weeks after the last suicide incident on the Bandra-Worli sea link comes news that an unidentified man allegedly jumped off the bridge on Tuesday.

The police, along with fire brigade officers, were still searching for the body at the time of going to press.

The Worli police said the incident took place around 5:30pm. A man, who appeared to be in his thirties, asked a taxi driver to stop on some pretext on the sea link and then allegedly jumped.

“We were informed by the control room in the evening about the incident, after which we went to the sea link. The guards at the toll plaza said a taxi driver told one of them that a man had committed suicide near poll number 77 on the sea link,” said a police officer from Worli police station.

“The driver left after in a hurry, before the guard could take down the taxi’s licence plate number. When we scrutinised the CCTV footage on the sea link, we saw that around 5:30pm, a north-bound taxi, coming from the Worli end, stopped and a man, who was wearing a white shirt and blue pants, stepped out of the taxi and jumped into the sea,” the officer said.

“The phone with which the call to the control room was made was switched off,” the officer said.

The driver has not been traced yet and the police are taking a closer look at the CCTV footage to identify the taxi’s licence plate, which is not clear in the footage,” said the officer.

A few weeks ago, the sea link’s toll collecting agency claimed to save the life of a woman, who was going to commit suicide from the bridge. The agency claimed the guards at the toll naka spotted the woman on the CCTV monitoring screen and stopped her.

On January 24, a man in his late 20s, who was also travelling in a taxi, asked the driver to stop and jumped off the sea link.

Last year, 12 people committed suicide by jumping off the sea link.