Strength Of A Woman

On the night of August 4, she was the one being chased. Today, Varnika Kundu is leading the pursuit to ensure a politician’s son doesn’t get away doing exactly as he pleases

- Asit Jolly

AT 12.30 PM ON WHAT HAD UNTIL THAT MOMENT BEEN AN UNUSUALLY QUIET Friday night, Ajay Kumar, one of the constables on the ‘graveyard’ shift at the police control room in Chandigarh, answered a distress call. A frightened woman, very evidently on the verge of panicking, said she was being chased. Two men in a white sports utility vehicle were following her and had attempted to block her way and tried to force entry into her car. She gave him the registration number of the vehicle stalking her. The young policeman advised her to keep driving. “We are on our way. Don’t worry,” he reassuringly told her. Acting with astonishing alacrity, two PCR vans in the vicinity of the pursuit, by then along Madhya Marg, the main arterial road running through Chandigarh’s northern sector towards Panchkula in Haryana, began closing in.

Precisely 10 minutes after she called the control room on the emergency 100 number, Chandigarh police personnel had nabbed her stalkers. “Tum jaante ho hum kaun hain (do you know who we are),” one of the men shouted, hoping to intimidate the cops. “We don’t want to know who you are,” head constable Satish Kumar retorted, deftly grabbing the keys from the SUV’s ignition. He then reported the arrests to the area police station in Sector 26.