The Central Unit of the Navi Mumbai Crime Branch arrested a flasher, suspected to be habitual, earlier this week.
Anilkumar Kanhaiyyalal Balmiki (25), a resident of T. F. Donar society in Mankhurd, allegedly flashed a 23-year-old college student near Kharghar railway station on September 19. The victim, who is from Hyderabad, is pursuing fashion design at a college in Kharghar and was on her way back to the hostel when Mr. Balmiki pushed her from behind. The victim fell and yelled at Mr. Balmiki, who then flashed her and fled. Upon returning to the hostel, the victim narrated the incident to her warden, who took her to the police station and registered a complaint.
Mr. Balmiki, who worked in a private firm at Belapur, was seen loitering on platforms and stalking women commuters in CCTV footage, police inspector Nivrutti Kolhatkar said. “From his movements, we feel that he could be a habitual flasher but we have not received any other complaints. We would like to urge anyone who has ever faced such a situation to approach the police and report it,” he said.
The police scanned footage from around 100 CCTV cameras to find where the accused resided. “Starting from the spot where the incident occurred, we started going through footage from all cameras along the way,” assistant police inspector Rajesh Gajjal said.
On the day of the incident, Mr. Balmiki had gone to Kharghar for some work and boarded a train around 7.15 p.m., just after flashing the girl. He was heading to Mankhurd, which is barely 20 minutes away, but travelled for close to two-and-a-half hours and got down around 9.45 p.m. “He would get down at each station, loiter around, follow a few females, vanish for some time, and then board another train. We suspect that he would have harassed women at every station,” Mr. Gajjal said.
