Women especially and the people in Vizag be warned, our reader shares his alarming story

Women are pride of our nation and families. If you give them wings to fly and let them pursue their dreams, they will always make us walk with our heads held high. Women play a prominent role in every family as a mother, sister and daughter. Safety of our women is becoming a question mark now-a-days. Crimes against women are reported every 2 minutes in India. Parents are waiting with bated breath at home until their teenage daughter reaches safe at home from work. Especially in Vizag, the crime rate against women has been increasing day by day. As per the records of Central Crime Records Bureau, Vizag, it is observed that one girl goes missing every week and at least two women get abducted a month.

Does a girl really have to be our mother or our sister or our daughter for us to treat her with respect and dignity? Why dont we treat every other women on the street as our sister or daughter? Remeber, ensuring the safety of women is our collective responsibility.

A incident that happened a week back encouraged me to bring this to you.  At 4:00 AM in the morning, I got down the bus and took an auto-rickshaw to reach my cousin’s house in Beach Road. Since it was early morning, the roads were deserted and the auto wala said he will take me in a short route to which i accepted. After 2 mins of travel, the auto driver reduced the speed of an auto and suddenly a stranger jumped into the auto, pushed me and sat beside me. I started shouting “Who are you? Why did you get into to running auto?” to which the driver replied “Sir, He is my friend” and the stranger said “Sir, this route is dangerous. I got in for the safety of my friend(auto driver)” This answer from his was weird and he was heavily drunk. On top of that, he was a tall looking heavily built dark man with pungent smell. Although I’m a daring young strong male, I was scared.

Now the driver started behaving erratically. The driver and his friend started discussing about weird stuff such as kidnaps, robberies, rapes, etc. He then started taking a shady route and playing music at full volume in the auto-rickshaw so that I couldn’t make any noise that could be heard.I had a feeling that things were going to go be wrong. Now, to save myself from these goons, I had a quick idea and did this

1. I took my phone out and set the alarm to ring next minute and put back my phone in my pocket. The alarm started ringing after a min; I took out the phone and posed as if i got a call from my cousin and asked the driver to reduce the volume of music as i must take the phone call. He didn’t budge at my first instruction. I now gathered courage and asked him again, loudly, strongly and sternly.
2. He budged a little. I started (fake ) talking on the phone to my cousin like this “ Haa CI garu, ippude bus diganu, auto lo intiki bayalderanu..enti miru bhayalderara nakosam? Sare, ee route kottaga undi, exact ga ekkada unnano cheppalenu so na location share chestunna miku google maps lo, auto title plate number miku whatsapp lo pampistanu..idhe dhaari lo randi miru, so madyalo kalavacchu”.(Hello CI Sir, just got down the bus and boarded an auto to our home..What? You started from home to pick me up? Okay, this auto guy is taking me in a new route, i cant tell you my exact location. So, I will share my moving location on Google Maps and the auto plate number on Whatsapp. You come on the same route that i share, so we can meet midway)
3. After I disconnected the call, the driver asked me if my cousin is CI of that area, to which i soundly replied “Yes”. Both the guys exchanged looks and then changed their topic, slowly started talking about latest films and diverted the auto onto main road.

Actually, I was not talking to anyone one on the phone. I was just pretending as if i was talking on phone with a cop. My cousin is a bank manager and I don’t know anybody from the police department. I just played a wit to ensure my safety. It somehow worked. I told the driver that my CI cousin is on the way to pick me up, not knowing that i took the auto. I asked him to go fast as I’m excited to meet my cousin after long time. Then we reached the house, gave him 100/-(dint collect the change) and jumped into the gate like an athlete. I dint give a chance to the auto driver to talk anything to me.

Never have I ever had my heart beating so fast and loudly and so much fear in me that I couldn’t feel my stomach. I had to face such a situation being a male. What if a female was in similar situation?

As a responsible son and a loving brother, I would want every mother and sister travelling on the streets to be safe. Always be careful while travelling alone. Safety is first priority. Whenever you board a cab/auto, share your ride details to your father and brother. Even if your surrounding look safe, play some wit like this so that the driver gets alerted and would not even think to harm you. He will never dare to misbehave with you. Who knows, this sort of wit play might save you like how i was saved.

Yo! Vizag girls..Be Attentive, Be Safe!

Manideep Tummalapudi