Hi Guys,
Wanna share a very painful and a stressful experience that I went through today!
I went to Malad Inorbit-Link road for lunch today. Around 2-30pm when I came out of the mall, I waited for a rick to take me home (from Malad west, link road to Malad east barely a 10 minutes drive).
I asked 3 ricks who had their meter in a half down state, they refused. Finally I could see a stationed rick No- MH02VS6564. I politely asked the rick driver (a man around mid sixties) to drop me to malad east. He refused saying that he would only want to Malad west. I felt dejected and finally just sat in his rick and ordered him to take to Malad east else would call up the RTO.
He didn’t budge. I finally called up the RTO on 022-24937755 and lodged my complaint. I was asked to vacate the rick and search for another one and was assured that an action would be taken against this driver. But having the feedback of my earlier complaints I insured that I do not vacate the rick and immediately called the Malad traffic control room situated at Malad subway. I do have their mobile number since I had faced a lot of these problems earlier as well. The Malad RTO asked me to order the rick driver to park his rick in a corner and then he would send an officer. When I asked the rick driver to park the rick, he did not pay heed to my instructions and drove the rick towards Goregoan at an unbeatable speed. I told him that he is doing a wrong thing and I am not going to be frightened by his stupid act. He did not bother. He jumped 2 signals, banged a man. I had an option to hit him from behind, make him forcibly stop the rick. However my conscience did not allow me to let my hands loose on a man close to my grandfathers age!
He then finally took me to some deserted spot in Oshiwara near Vishal Mega mall, parked his rick and fled. I waited for some time. Got in touch with the Oshiwara RTO. But nothing helped. Finally I got a sight of a sub inspector named Mr Jadhav who was patrolling there on this bike. I called out to him, explained him the entire scene and asked him to help. He accepted that RTO is a bunch of non sense guys and there is no point asking them for help. He asked me to sit on his bike and then he took me to the Oshiwara Police Station.
I met the inspector there (do not recollect his name). Lodged my complain along with the rick number.
I know nothing of this would help and my time, effort and money have all gone waste. No one would take any actions. Since the RTO would collect a bribe of 100 bucks and ignore the complains also in case the Oshiwara Police station traces the rick, they would still make merry with their pie of the bribe. This leads me to some following conclusions:-
1. Are Mumbaikars so helpless that for a basic need to commuting, they need to go through so much agony!
2. If people stop taking rick as a way to teach them a lesson and start taking their own cars on the road, how many can actually afford that and incase we could afford, is the Mumbai road infrastructure in a position to accept that! This is the only reason that inspite of owning a car, I hardly drive in Mumbai.
3. I pay a third of my income as tax to the government guess only for the erratic behavior of the rick drivers, the helplessness of the infrastructure, corruption amongst the government officers!
4. I could also have lost my cool and hammered the rick driver and many more disgusted passengers would have followed me to hit the aged man. But is that the solutions. No guys I am not behaving like a Ganadhi to a Anna Hazare, the basic question here is would that help. Beating one guy would that clean the system!
5. Just imagine, instead of me had there been a women who would have decided to take such a bold step and God forbid, she would have been taken to some deserted spot and some mishappening would have occurred, who would be blamed for the same?
I guess I did my duty as an aware citizen to take appropriate action against the driver. I know nothing would happen but if each one of us start doing something like this, civic bodies would be compelled to take some stern actions against some obvious malpractices.
I request to please DO NOT empathise with me. Please sign the same and post this message to every possible forum, group so that by doing this if it reaches some concerned person, I would feel my 2 hours of no justice struggle did not go waste.
Incase some civic authorities or journalist happens to read this, I am available on 9820779873/
– Vipin Saboo
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