WOMEN

A man got into a ladies compartment of a Panvel-CST local and started threatening female passengers. Mirror photographer Sachin Haralkar captured the dramatic moments when male commuters wrestled the bottle-sniffing man to the ground.A19-year-old with a backpack got onto a first-class compartment of a Panvel-CST train on Thursday morning. The man (not seen in the picture) appeared slightly dazed and was seen repeatedly sniffing a handkerchief dipped in what appeared to be an addictive substance.Without any provocation or incident, he climbed into the adjoining ladies compartment from a gap in the steel barrier separating the male and female sections, witnesses said. The train left Panvel station at 9.54 am, but it is not clear from which station the man boarded it.Stunned women in the compartment asked the man, later identified as Baljit Dinesh Dhakolia, to get off, but he started abusing them. On hearing the commotion, a ticket checker in the general first-class compartment intervened and ordered the man to get out once the train halts. The train was near the GTB Nagar railway station at the time.Dhakolia, who was clearly high, ignored the warnings and leaned out of the compartment and began performing stunts. Even though the train was in motion, he clambered onto the rooftop.The women thought he would not come back, but he entered the compartment again at Wadala. He threatened to harm the female passengers and demanded to know who complained about him to the ticket checker.Fearing that Dhakolia may assault the women, brave commuter Siddharth Singh climbed through the gap and overpowered him. WIth the help of other commuters, Singh pulled Dhakolia back into the common compartment.Even after being wrestled to the ground, Dhakolia continued to rant and abuse passengers and claimed that his father was a senior railway employee. When passengers searched his bag and pockets, they found a bottle of an addictive substance and immediately informed the Railway Protection Force. The train was near the Dockyard Road station at the time.The drug addict, who lives in a slum in Mankhurd, was finally handed over to cops when the train reached CST at 11.20 am. He was fined and given a stern warning before being released. The menace of druggies on the city’s commuter train systems has been on the rise. They not only create a nuisance, but also mug passengers,