By Prathiba Raju and Madhulika Sonkar, IANS,
New Delhi : It is all happenning at the Ramlila Maidan: children lost and found; purses returned and found empty; and cell phones blinking unattended in the dark.
In the blaring noise of patriotic songs and sloganeering crowds, 40-year-old Harish Yadav from Bihar breaks into tears when he narrates how he lost his eight-year-old son at the spawling yet crowded ground, venue of Anna Hazare’s hunger strike for the last 12 days.
Yadav found his son with the help of volunteers after an hour of frenetic search.
“We pacified Yadav,” Praveen Deshmukh, 24, a volunteer coordinating with the information desk, told IANS. “We kept him contstantly informed. After about an hour, we were able to find the child.”
Deshmukh said that his team found ten other children who went missing in the hurly-burly and reunited them with their parents. “We have also received 40 purses, all of them empty,” Deshmukh said. “Our volunteers have reovered 15 mobile phones.”
Scribes covering the protest also have stories to share on pickpocketing. “I caught two women with a baby stealing my mobile and purse Saturday journalist Sunny Joesph said. “When we went to the police, none bothered to help.”
According to police sources, gangs of women thieves and pickpockets from Delhi and neighbouring states like Uttar Pradesh are active at the venue, which is spread over a vast area, and it is very difficult to stop them.
“Thousands of people from different backgrounds throng the venue and it is becoming difficult for us to keep a tab,” a senior police officer told IANS.
Denying any laxity on the part of the police, an India Against Corruption volunteer said, “Hundreds of police personnel are on tight vigil and we have not got any complaints as such, but with a huge crowd, it is one’s own responsibility not to bring valuables.”
(Prathiba Raju and Madhulika Sonkar can be contacted at [email protected] and [email protected])