Cops make third arrest in senior citizen's attack

MUMBAI: The Vikhroli police on Monday arrested a relative of the auto-rickshaw driver Abid Bagwan who along with his father Iqbal had assaulted an elderly woman and her relatives on Saturday night after she took another auto driver to task for refusing to ferry her.
According to the police, Iqbal's brother-in-law Mohammad Asif Shaikh (30) joined in the attack on the victim Girija Upadhyay and her daughter and daughter-in-law, who were accompanying her.He has been charged with assault and criminal intimidation. The police are looking for Iqbal's wife Afsari Bano, who had joined in the attack on the elderly woman and her family.
The attack was instigated by the driver Abid, when he saw Girija berate another auto driver for refusing to ferry her. He intervened and began arguing with the three women who lived in the area. Worried about their safety, Girija alerted her nephew Subhash who lives in the same locality. But when Subhash arrived at the scene, Abid turned on him. By then Abid's kin, Shaikh included, had arrived at the scene, and the family launched a combined attack on Girija. "Iqbal's wife Afsari Bano is wanted in the case. We have learnt that she has got herself admitted to a nursing home and we are waiting for her to be discharged," a police official said.
Girija, who suffers from hypertension, is yet to make a complete recovery. "She requested the doctors to discharge her for a few hours on Monday due to work obligations. She is a trustee at the Mahadev Upadhyay Vidyalaya at Vikhroli (East)," said a family friend.
The driver who had refused to ferry the three women made a hasty exit. The police are still to track him down as Girija could not note down the registration number of his vehicle.
Incidentally, 27-years-ago, Girija's husband Sitaram was murdered at the same spot in Tagore Nagar, Vikhroli, where Saturday's incident took place.