Cops do not help woman in need

■ Teen stops patrol car but policemen do not offer help

A teenager who stopped to help an old woman found that the police was not willing to help her.

Worse, her family got scared when they heard that she was going elsewhere and rushed to the place to collect her.

Before noon on Sunday, Maria Osman, 17, was travelling from Attapur to her grandmother's home at Abids in an autorickshaw when she saw an old woman faint on the road near PVNR Pillar No. 55 at Rethibowli.

Maria asked the driver to stop and rushed to help the woman, who appeared to be about 70 years old. A passerby got the woman some food and water.

On recovering, the woman told her that she had come from Aurangabad in search of her son. Her son had come to Hyderabad a year back but she had not heard from him since.

She was told that her son could be found at Tolichowki chowrasta, where daily wage workers gather. Based on this scrap of information, she had come to

Hyderabad and was searching for the son for the last six months.

On hearing this, the passerby who had bought food gave her money and asked Maria to drop her at the railway station from where she could take a train home.

After a few minutes, a police patrol car drove past. Maria stopped the van and explained the situation to the police.

The police told her to drop the woman at the railway station and left. The police did not offer to help nor took the contact of details of Maria.

Maria called up her uncle Victor and told him what had happened and that she would be going to the Nampally railway station. This panicked Victor, who called up Maria’s father Alexander, regional manager for an automobile company.

Victor then kept Maria engaged in conversation and told her to stop the autorickshaw and get down wherever she was.

Maria was at Mehdipatnam and did as instructed.

Alexander reached there in 12 minutes and found Maria safe. They then left the old woman at the railway station and helped her board the train.

“The alarming thing we have seen just a few kilometres away on this same road the veterinarian Disha killed brutally. Those few minutes that I took to reach Maria, I cannot explain the fear I felt. In this situation, the police could have informed the family,” Alexander said.