Some heroes wear khaki: Woman cop skips CM duty to save suicidal woman in Chennai

CHENNAI: Sub Inspector P Meera of Pondy Bazaar police station joined the Chief Minister route bandobust duty an hour past the fall-in time on Monday evening. But she is most likely to be rewarded for her late arrival as she spent the previous hour building rapport with a 27-year-old woman, perched on the fourth-floor window sill of her family's apartment, to talk her out of suicide. Sub-Inspector Meera prevailed.

SI Meera told DT Next that she acted on instinct and attempted negotiation with the woman by getting her phone number from her parents after she spotted her with a phone in her hand while threatening to jump off the building.

Around 4 pm on Monday, Meera was at her desk when a man came panting to the police station. "A woman is trying to jump from the fourth floor," the man said. Meera was supposed to report for the CM bandobust at 4.30 pm, but she wasted no time and went with the man. As she was reaching the scene, she informed her Inspector and the Mambalam Police, under whose jurisdiction the events were unfolding.

"From the ground, I could see that about 80 per cent of the woman's body was outside the window. She was crying and shouting at the crowd that had gathered below. She saw some of us in Uniform and her shouting intensified," SI Meera recalled.

Personnel from the Fire and Rescue services, too, had arrived and were preparing safety nets and plotting to save the woman when Meera noticed a mobile phone in the woman's hand.

With the help of a resident, Meera rushed to the fourth floor of the apartment and found the anxious parents of the woman. The woman had locked herself in the bedroom and every time, her parents knocked on the door, she asked them to leave and threatened that she would jump.

Sub-Inspector Meera took the young woman's phone number from the parents, and from the other side of the door, she began her quest to try and talk her out of her decision.

The first two attempts ended unsuccessfully as the woman yelled names at the SI and hung up the call, asking her to leave. But on the third attempt, she was willing to engage.

Ragefully, she yelled over the phone, "What do you want?"

Meera recalls the conversation, "I tried to build a rapport. I told her that I would listen to whatever she had to say and consider me as her sister."

The woman responded by saying that she was not willing to believe anyone and that she had already cut her wrists and would die anyway. The sub-inspector continued her "sisterly talk" and gained the woman's trust over the course of the next three minutes.

Meera told the woman that she would now be breaching her bedroom door to come and talk to her, to which the woman said, "Only you should come."

In seconds, TNFRS personnel breached the door and rushed to catch hold of the woman sitting on the windowsill and pulled her inside.

"It wouldn't have been advisable to break open the door as soon as we entered the apartment, as the woman was already in distress and might act out of instinct and jump. So, it was important that we keep her talking. When she told me that only I should come, it was apparent that she was willing to be saved. Luckily for us, only the top latch was locked, and we were able to breach the door in seconds and save her," Meera said.

The rescued woman was taken in an ambulance to a hospital where she was treated.

At 5.30 pm, Sub-Inspector Meera joined her bandobust duty. "In matters of life and death, our personnel have been asked to act without waiting for orders or bothering about jurisdiction. It is commendable on SI Meera's part to act immediately, even though it was not her jurisdiction," a senior police officer said.

Life Savers:

March 30 - Three police constables on patrol at the Marina beach saved two sisters from a suicide attempt

April 19 - Two policemen from the Kodambakkam traffic enforcement wing, Head Constable S Devaraj and Constable G Premnath, negotiated with a woman who attempted to end her life by stepping onto the balcony of the fifth floor of a private hospital in Alwarpet, where she was undergoing treatment and saved her.

Monday - Pondy Bazaar SI Meera stopped a woman from jumping off the window in her fourth-floor home in Mambalam Police jurisdiction