Call from FB foils cook's suicide bid

Thanks to a wel l-coordinated operation involving Facebook (FB) officials in Ireland and the personnel attached to the Del hi, Mumbai and Navghar u nit of the Thane (rural) police, the suicide bid of a 24-year-old man was successfully thwarted in Bhayandar. The man V imal (name changed) who had lef t for Mumbai a fortn ight af ter a quarrel with his wife in Del hi, started posting ‘Facebook Live’ videos indicating his intentions o f committing suicide on Saturday evening. Af ter identif ying suicidal activity from the FB accoun t, officials from Ireland passed the information along with contact details to the cyber cell of th e Delhi police, which i mmediately traced the ad dress to a locality in East Delhi.

The police team foun d that the FB account was registered on th e number of a woman. But it also came to light that the FB accoun t was being used by h er husband who had lef t home af ter a fight with her. Although she was unaware about her husb and’s current address in Mumbai, s he gave Delhi police his n umber. The cyber cell sleuths got in touch with DCP (Cyber) Dr Rashmi Karandikar from Mumbai police, whose team n ot only established contact and tried to counsel Vimal, but simultaneously alerted the Navghar police about his presence in Bhayandar. “Following information by our Mumbai counterparts, special teams were deployed to locate the man. However, he d id not stay at the specified address. After a c ouple of h ours, we finally managed to establish contact with him and he agreed to meet us. Our person nel met him at a hotel and spoke at length about his psycholog ical distress and coun selled him before dropping him at a flat in the Goddev area o f Bhayandar (east), where he was staying along with his colleagu es. We also asked his roommates to take care of him,” said Senior Police Inspector of Navghar police station Sampatrao Patil. The man, who works as a c ook at a hotel in the Golden Nest area, was under stress apparently d ue to financial and other issues, which had cropped up in his life due to the COVID-19 outbreak.