TICKETLESS TRAVELLER TELLS TC: ARREST MALLYA FIRST

SoBo resident refuses to pay fine; spends 12 hours arguing with RPF demanding that dues from Mallya be recovered first; to be produced before magistrate today.

India has had its fair bit of scams but nothing has caught the imagination of the common man as much as Vijay Mallya and his famed 'good times' have. Thousands of jokes and memes are being frantically shared in the virtual world but nothing quite beats what happened in the real world on Sunday when a woman caught travelling ticketless refused to pay the fine of Rs 260 saying Mallya, who owes banks around Rs 9,000 crore, had bolted but poor people were being harassed. 

The woman, Premlata Bhansali, said this was her way of fighting for the poor. She herself is not exactly poor. The 44-year-old mother of two lives in a tony tower in Bhuleshwar, south Mumbai; and apartments in the tower range between Rs 5 and 7 crore. She's a homemaker; her husband runs a business. 

On Sunday, she was returning home from Elphinstone station around 12 noon when a lady ticket checker asked for her ticket at Mahalaxmi station. Premalata had not purchased the Rs 10-ticket. When she was told that she would have to pay a fine of Rs 260 for ticketless travel, she asked to be taken to the station master. 

Once inside the Mahalaxmi station master's office, she kept referring to Mallya and how he had fled the country even though he owed banks Rs 9,000 crore. Railway officials who noted the sequence of events and



Premlata's statement in the diary entry said that she kept saying that authorities could not recover any money from Mallya but were keen on fining her for not buying a ticket worth Rs 10. 

Premlata spent nearly 12 hours arguing with railway officials - demanding that she either be sent to jail so that she could lodge her protest like Anna Hazare; or be produced before a magistrate so that she could give him/her a piece of her mind. 

Woman constables of the Railway Protection Force (RPF) the Government Railway Police (GRP) and Agripada Police station tried their best to counsel but Premlata just wouldn't listen. They finally summoned her husband, Ramesh Bansali, to talk some sense into her. But Premlata would have none of it. She told her husband that she was capable of taking care of herself. 

The exasperated officials had to then take her for a medical check-up, without which detaining a woman is illegal. She was finally let off at 11.40 pm. "She was not willing to give her family's contact details and asked to be sent to jail. She kept referring to Vijay Mallya's escape from the country and asked us to produce her before the magistrate," said Senior Divisional Security Commissioner, Anand Vijay Jha. 

Premlata could not be produced before a magistrate on Sunday. However, her case will be heard on Tuesday at the magistrate's court in Mumbai Central. "I will talk in front of the magistrate. I will tell the court how they behaved with me.