Couples have to face moral policing from strangers whenever they try to steal a few minutes of privacy. There is no dearth of people who use this moral policing as a means to blackmail couples, who often fall a victim to this crime for fear of bringing shame to their family.
Something similar happened in Mumbai when a doctor and a medical student were seated, engaged in a private conversation near Worli Seaface, Mumbai on February 7, 2018. As they were talking, they noticed a woman standing behind them clicking pictures.
Recalling the incident that happened at around 2:50 pm in broad daylight, the doctor Ramesh Yadav(29) (Name changed) told Mid-day,
“At the same time, another woman came and started abusing us, saying, ‘you people come from anywhere and do obscene acts in front of our houses’. I told them that we were not doing anything and that she was abusing us without reason.”
The women then proceeded to blackmail them saying that they would have to give them money if they didn’t want any trouble. Earlier Ramesh agreed to give them whatever he had with him but then the women demanded a whopping ₹50,000.
The man told them he didn’t have that kind of money and that they would have to give it to them the next day. The women started blackmailing them, saying that if they didn’t get the money within an hour they would send the pictures to the girl’s family. At one point, they snatched the man’s Aadhar card.
It was then that the man decided to approach the police station. They reached Worli police station at 4 pm to lodge a complaint.
The two women identified as Manisha Khakhadiya, 38, and Shilpa Charniya, 40, both residents of Dongri. It was also revealed that they ran an NGO of which Charniya is the President and Khakhadiya is the Secretary.
The accused were booked under Sections 384 (extortion), 504 (intentional insult), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 34 (common intention) of the IPC but have not been arrested yet. The police are of the opinion that they might have looted other couples using a similar ruse of living in Worli when they were actually from Dongri.