Dinesh Kamath's news item 'Locals frightened of Navi Mumbai police?' that was published in Newsband

Locals frightened of Navi Mumbai police?

By Dinesh Kamath

NAVI MUMBAI: At least four Nerul locals had seen the body of Sandhya Singh (50) lying next to a pond near Palm Beach Road, but they were "too scared" to report it to the police.

These locals, in fact, had spotted the body a month before a team of British birdwatchers stumbled upon skull and bones at the spot and one of them reported the finding to the police.

These locals included an employee of Delhi Public School in Nerul, fishermen, and bus drivers and cleaners. The reason for their not informing the police was they were frightened of the police. One of them mistook the placing of the body there as some black magic performed by some tantrik.

The police are of the opinion that if they were informed about the body earlier, they would have succeeded in getting the vital break through in the murder case.

A senior policeman condemned the indifference displayed by the locals and blamed them for the inability of the police to solve the case speedily.

The foreign birdwatchers - Dr Micheal Oates, Neil Simons and two others – should be lauded for informing the police as soon as they saw the body.

The attitude of locals towards the police should be a lesson to the policemen to try and be more people friendly. The informer should not be harassed and be made to make endless trips to police station. This type of harassment will only lead to people not informing about criminal activities taking place around them. But one of the police official said that the locals who spotted the body should have at least given an anonymous call to the police. People should have the basic human decency of raising alarm at the sight of a dead fellow human.