City’s best-known hot spot also a magnet for crime

Gurgaon: An unexceptional Monday morning turned into an ordeal for many office goers. It also left an uncomfortable question hanging in the

October air

: is it bad karma, or has MG Road really become a

magnet

for the most sensational crimes?

In the wake of the dreadful stabbing to death in broad daylight of a 34-year-old woman — inside the busy MG Road Metro station — security detail will probably be scrutinised, and questions will almost certainly be asked on whether there are enough cops to go around, to man this perpetually busy, and now increasingly unsafe, thoroughfare.

But it’s a sign of how dichotomous this city can be that a strip famous for its malls is now as notorious for being the scene of blood, gore and gang wars.

Last year, on a typically busy weekday morning, MG Road became a setting for a Wild West-type shootout. Rivalries spilled out into the open when members of one gang attempted to kill the leader of another. The mobster who was targeted happened to be inside his SUV. He survived but his driver lost control of the vehicle and careened into an autorickshaw. The three-wheeler was crushed, the life of its driver snuffed out.

Lurid stories have for long abounded of how MG Road’s malls would turn into pick-up spots at night. For a fair while, one of the malls here just couldn’t keep out of the news, so infamous did it become for attracting the boorish sort — local hoodlums high on testosterone who think nothing of picking up fights with bar owners, patrons and even bouncers (not that any of these have been beyond reproach). No less lurid are tales associated with a hotel at one end of MG Road, the first such in new Gurgaon.

Unfortunately, these urban legends have come to define a city that can at times seem irredeemably dystopian. But it’s almost as if the MG Road of malls — the new city’s first pleasure boulevard — has now gone to seed, the neon shimmer now a series of dark spots, even in the clear light of day.

An employee of a bank spoke of a perceptibly more insecure environment in the area, while another, whose office is on MG Road, believes families would now think twice before venturing out. Even folks ensconced in their fancy cars aren’t safe from harm.

Bright lights tend to obscure most vices. Still, maybe not even the tightest security can stop the crazed psychopath, or gang men intent on creating murderous mayhem. It’s a dilemma that even PI Marlowe might have struggled to resolve.