Mumbai: 19-year-old college girl takes on Juhu cops on Twitter

If you want the police force or even government authorities to take cognisance of your complaints, all you need to do is tweet your problem. After three months of knocking on the doors of various security establishments over her stolen mobile, a city youth took to Twitter to vent her frustration with the police force yesterday morning. Within a few hours, a top cop reverted and promised to look into the issue.

Nidhi Maheshwari

Nidhi Maheshwari, 19, a student of Mithibhai College, allegedly resorted to Twitter after repeated complaints to cops to trace her mobile phone went unheeded. A Juhu police officer said, "Nidhi said in her complaint that she was heading to a coffee shop with a friend on a scooter one night in July, when two men started following them on a bike. It was when the scooter halted near Juhu police station that one of the accused snatched her phone. They then fled from the spot."

Nidhi was sure that the incident must have been captured on the CCTV outside the police station as well as the nearby traffic signals. She rushed to the cops immediately, but the cops allegedly told her that their office Internet connection was acting up. The next day, Nidhi called on the cops again, but the CCTV images were too blurry. Following several visits to the traffic police department as well Mumbai Police offices, Nidhi took to Twitter and said, "What if a heinous crime had been captured on camera and all the images were blurry?"

An officer from Juhu police station said, "The robbery took place at night and the vehicle of the accused was in motion, so the images are blurry. We are looking at images from other CCTVs in the area to nab the culprits." Mumbai police spokesperson, DCP Deepak Devraj, said, "We immediately responded to Nidhi's tweets. I have urged cops at Juhu police station to look into her complaint at the earliest."