Mumbai: A few Vikhroli residents on Sunday alerted the local police on spotting a homeless man who was found lying naked at a service road on Eastern Express Highway. The locals, who fed the unidentified man, alleged that the police took 24 hours to pick him up from the road on Monday afternoon but also abandoned him at the same spot from where he was picked up the same night.
Faced with the residents’ concern about the man’s safety, the police again picked him up on Tuesday evening and is attempting to track down his family. The man, who seems to be in his mid-fifties, identified himself as ‘Shahrukh Khan’ to the residents. When The Asian Age spoke to Vikhroli police station’s senior police inspector Shridhar Hanchate, he said, “We had picked him up from the T-junction on Monday night, and left him on the same spot as he asked to be escorted out. After receiving a phone call from the local residents, we picked him up from the divider at T-junction again and will question him about his family.”
According to locals, the homeless man was first spotted lying naked on the service road near T-junction on Sunday afternoon, when one of the locals was on his way to feed the stray dogs. The family of local resident Danielle Singh offered their lunch to the homeless man. The man can only speak in Hindi and said he was abandoned by his kids on the service road, who had promised to pick him up after sometime but never turned up.
Ms Singh told The Asian Age, “After repeated calls to the police control room, the police came to pick up the homeless man after 24 hours, only to leave him behind my building the same night. The Vikhroli police picked up the homeless man again after Ms Singh called the police station on Tuesday evening. The Vikhroli police will now feed him and search for his relatives and give his custody to the family.
