PUNE: A man allegedly molested a 39-year-old homemaker on the pretext of removing a

in the elevator of a gated

society off

in

around 8.40pm on Saturday.

The incident occurred when the woman had come to the ground floor to see off a friend. “As she was about to enter the elevator, the woman received a call on her cellphone and she started chatting with the caller. Once inside the lift, she noticed that a man was already there. While she pressed the button for the eighth floor, the man pressed the button for the tenth floor of the 11-storeyed building,” an officer from the Kondhwa police said.

On finding the woman engrossed in chatting, the stranger told her that a cockroach was crawling on her head. “On the pretext of removing the

, the suspect molested the woman by touching her inappropriately,” the woman stated in the FIR registered with the Kondhwa police.

The shaken woman stepped out of the lift as soon as it stopped on the eighth floor and rushed to her flat. “Once inside her house, she checked her clothes and found no cockroach on her,” the officer said.

The woman was so shaken that it took her almost a day to approach the police. She told the police that the suspect had used the same modus for molesting two more women in her society recently. Based on her allegations, the police checked and found that there were no complaints of similar nature registered with them. “Probably, the other women did not register the complaint,” the officer added.

To verify the woman’s claims, TOI got in touch with the other residents of the society. One of the residents said the security guard had caught a delivery boy for harassing a woman. “However, the woman concerned refused to lodge an FIR, following which the suspect was allowed to walk away,” the resident added.

When contacted, the chairman of the society said, “I did not receive any complaint of similar nature earlier. I directed security guards to remain vigilant after this case came to the fore,” he said, adding that the society has provided the footage from the CCTV camera installed in the lift to the police.

Police said the CCTV camera has captured the partial images of the suspect. “We suspect that the suspect had signed with a false name in the visitors’ register,” sub-inspector Vishnu Wadkar of the Kondhwa police said. “We have taken serious note of the incident and are working on certain clues for establishing the identity of the suspect,” he added.

On safety measures the societies must adopt to ensure security of their residents, additional director general of police Rajendra Sonawane (retd) said, “I insist that superior-quality CCTV cameras be installed in the lifts, entry, exit and parking lots of the housing societies.”

Kondhwa resident Saifee Danawala said, “Two years ago, the Kondhwa police had sensitized residents of housing societies on installing CCTV cameras. The cameras can help in establishing the identity of the suspects and also ensure that no person is punished for the crime s/he did not commit.”