Police Diary: ‘Wrong number’, not police station

But then, phone calls began. “I received two calls within hours in December. I told them it was a wrong number and didn’t think anything much of it,” the 28-year-old curriculum developer said.

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“When the third call came, asking for Mankhurd police station again, I realised something was up. I didn’t hang up after saying it was a wrong number. I asked the man on the other end where had he found my number,” Kumbhar said speaking to The Indian Express.

There was a journalist on the other side who told her that the mobile number had been listed as the number to reach Mankhurd police station on the Mumbai Police website.

“It all made sense, all the calls I received, messages discussing gory details of murders and calls over the next two months asking for Mankhurd police station,” Kumbhar said.

Now, she just says “wrong number” and hangs up. It has been three months now since the number has been uploaded on Mumbai Police website.

“I keep thinking of calling up and telling the police to take my number off, but I keep forgetting,” she says. While normally police stations have landline numbers listed on the Mumbai police website, because of network problems Mankhurd police station was allotted a mobile number. The actual mobile number still remains a mystery.

While Kumbhar’s ordeal would have been recent, there are some old timers as well like the Shahs from Borivali whose landline number has been listed as that of Dahisar police station for “a decade now”. V B Shah, a Borivali resident, does not think of it much now. “Nearly 10 years back, we received several phone calls every day. However, in the past few years, we hardly received a few phone calls from journalists,” he says.

There is a reason behind this partial solution to his problem. After his rounds of complaints, while the number has been taken off from the police website, the police contact number sheets allotted to journalists still bear his number. There have been many who have been at pains to tell callers they cannot register an FIR. A coconut seller at Bhandup rued how his business was taking a hit since he kept getting calls for Bhandup police station.

Rajkumar Chafekar, till recently the senior inspector of Nerul police station, was looked at in awe by his colleagues. Chafekar was probably one of the few senior inspectors whom Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray sent ‘Happy Diwali’ messages. While Chafekar knew Thackeray was not even aware of his existence, his colleagues would wonder how the senior inspector had found entry into the celebrity circles.

The reason: he was using a ‘special number’ which he claims once belonged to socialite and writer Shobha De. “A few years back, a friend of mine working with a mobile network provider told me that as part of “Christmas offers” special numbers — those that can be easily remembered — were being given out. I purchased a number and started using it,” Chafekar said. “Then I would start getting calls from Bollywood types. Ram Gopalji Varma called me a few times asking for madam (De). I told him it was no longer her number,” the senior inspector currently posted in Beed said. “During festivals I would get messages from several celebrities,” he says with a laugh. His colleagues would ask him how do people like Uddhav Thackeray know him. “I would say that they just know me,” he says, mischief in his voice.

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