Determined to deluded, these star-struck fans make Mumbai cops sweat

“We had to tie his hands with a rope so he wouldn’t harm himself or anyone else,” claimed a police officer. The police found that the man had quit an elite school in Punjab after his classmates got better jobs than he did.

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“Since then, he has devoted himself to become like his hero Salman Khan. He had the support of his parents to go to Mumbai, just like in the movie,” the officer said, evoking the story of Delhi boy Gaurav Chandna, who makes the same trip in Fan to meet his idol, actor Aryan Khanna.

At the Bandra and Juhu police stations, which have several film personalities living under their jurisdictions, dealing with such fans —ranging from the passionate lover to the unreasonable and obsessive — is a daily exercise.

Accustomed at turning away even the most persistent of fans from the homes of film stars, even seasoned police personnel are sometimes taken aback.

A senior officer at Bandra police station recalls sighting a heavily pregnant woman fighting her way through a crowd of thousands outside Salman Khan’s house at Bandstand December last year, the day he was acquitted by the Bombay High Court in connection with the hit-and-run case.

“I was horrified. She was eight months pregnant. I told her that it was not safe for her to be here, but her husband said that she was a huge fan of Salman Khan and had insisted on catching a glimpse of him,” he said.

When they aren’t battling to maintain order outside Khan’s home, the police receive regular phone calls about runaway youth standing outside Galaxy Apartments, hoping to meet the star.

So far this year, the Bandra police have managed to persuade an 18-year-old girl from Amravati and a young man from Punjab to give up their vigils outside the actor’s Bandra house.

There is no easy way to deal with such fans of film stars, say the police, and it requires constant and sympathetic conversation.

“These people live in a dream world and our job is to get them out of it and send them home. But they make it very difficult and we aren’t trained psychologists. So we take time to find their emotional spots. Some love their mothers, others love their fathers or sisters. It is just a question of finding the right spot, which convinces them to go home,” another officer said.

But there have been those who have stuck to their stories and refused to crack under cross-questioning.

An officer at Juhu police station narrated the story of a 16-year-old girl who had run away from her home in Allahabad a few years ago and had landed at Jalsa, Amitabh Bachchan’s house.

“She said that her family had been murdered by dacoits but she had managed to escape. And only Bachchan, who is also from Allahabad, could help her now,” the inspector recounted.

When she wouldn’t admit to the truth even after spending a week at Juhu police station, the girl was sent to a specialised unit that arranges for minor children to be sent home.

“She stayed there for a month before admitting that she had lied and run away from home,” the inspector said.

The police now direct Bachchan fans to wait outside Jalsa at 5.30 pm every Sunday when the actor stands on a stool and waves for a few minutes, says Pandit Thackeray, who was an inspector at Juhu police station before being promoted and posted to Bandra two months ago.

Meanwhile, his subordinates in the station house have come to worry about the unannounced visits by a 32- year-old from Ulhasnagar, who claims that Salman Khan is stalking her.

The last time she visited the police station, the officer she had been asked to meet, took off his name tag.

“She remembers my name, but not my face”, he said.

The woman has accused Khan of inserting a microchip in her body and harassing her with its aid. Her attempts to register an FIR have been unsuccessful and policemen watch in silence while she rages at their inaction and threatens to break computers.

In her complaint, the woman has claimed that she noticed the chip’s presence in 2014 after several personal and professional setbacks and traced them back to Khan. On each of her visits, she had to be requested to leave with an assurance from the police that once the actor returned to town, a police team would visit Galaxy Apartments and speak to the actor.

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