A 26-year-old woman approached the Amboli police station on Tuesday evening alleging that a man flashed at her inside the lift of the Crystal Paradise building. The police have identified the accused as Mahesh Pale (29), who works at a private company in the same building. Based on the woman’s statement, who owns an event management company, the police have arrested Pale on charges of molestation under the Indian Penal Code. Men in the building reportedly nabbed him and handed him over to the Amboli police. The woman said on Tuesday, she had entered the building at 2 pm to go to her office on the eigth floor. While waiting for the lift on the ground floor, she saw three men waiting outside the lift. The police officers said she and the three men entered the lift. On the sixth floor, two men got off the lift, leaving only the woman and Pale in the lift. “Since Pale worked on the seventh floor, the victim did not suspect anything. When the gates of the lift closed, Pale immediately opened the zip of his pants and flashed at the woman. Scared, the woman pushed him away and tried to stop the lift, and rushed out of the lift screaming. Hearing the woman scream, the other employees in the building gathered around the lift. Pale ran downstairs, however, the woman ran after him and grabbed his shirt. Meanwhile, the crowd followed the woman and nabbed him on the fifth floor,” said Prabhakar Medhe, senior police inspector of the Amboli police station. The crowd then beat up Pale and handed him over to the police on Tuesday evening. “We have arrested Pale and will present him before the court on Wednesday. The woman’s statement has been recorded and we are now investigating if more women have been molested by the accused,” added Medhe. Meanwhile, Pale’s wife has told the police that her husband is innocent. Pale and his wife have been staying in Worli since they got married seven years ago. “My husband has never done anything like this. He is innocent,” said Pale’s wife. Woman ‘stripped, photographed’ at film audition A 23-year-old woman approached the Versova police station on Sunday alleging that she was stripped, photographed and then blackmailed. “The woman, a struggling actress, responded to a film audition call and reached the venue, a bungalow in Mhada at Four Bungalows, Andheri. She has alleged that when she entered the bungalow, she saw more than eight men waiting,” the police said. She also told the police that once she walked in, the men closed the door behind her and attacked her. “She was stripped and photographed. She was also told to return or pay Rs 1 lakh to ensure that the photographs were not uploaded on the Internet,” officers said. The woman rushed to the Versova police station the same evening to lodge the complaint. “We searched the bungalow but did not find any evidence. We have identified four to five men, who work with a local newspaper,” said Police Inspector Subhash Vele from the Versova police station. Vele also said they had detained one person and were investigating the case.
