Bye Bye S3

I have always believed that the Mumbai police is really helpful. Probably because the only times I've interacted with the police is when they come home for verification of address for passport renewals! I also always believed that the police department has been given a bad reputation because of a bad cops (kinda similar to how people think that us finance guys are the devil's minions, just because of a few people on wall street!)
But yesterday, I was in for a rude shock. Kinda...I wasn't directly affected, but my sister was, and she's important to me!
At around 9 in the night yesterday, my sister, Mamta was returning home from work. She sat in the ladies first class compartment with her friend in the 8:52 Borivali slow train. The train was reasonably full, bust she got place to sit on the window seat with her back towards the door and no one else next to her.
She took her phone (a beautiful Samsung Galaxy S3) from her bag to text someone, just as the train started, and before she knew what hit her, a man (in his early 20s) entered the train, grabbed the phone out of her hand and ran out. All the women in the compartment saw what happened, and all of them pulled the 4 different emergency brake chains in the compartment. But the train did not stop.
At Marine line station, a cop entered the train and my sister told him what happened. He asked her to go back to Churchgate station and register a complaint at the railway police station there.
Now, there are a bunch of things that are so wrong with the entire episode, loss of the phone being the least of all our worries.

• Now, as per the government railway police instructions, there has to be at least one armed officer in the ladies compartments in all the trains between 8:30 pm to 6:30 am to specifically prevent such cases. There was no such police officer in the train between Churchgate to Marine Lines. And when one entered at Marine Lines, he simply shrugged off my sister's panic and asked her to go back to Churchgate and report the theft there.
• When the women in the compartment tried to pull the chain to activate the emergency brakes, it did not work! The train did not stop! It just picked up speed.
• When my sister and her friend went to the police station, they refused to file an FIR on the grounds that my sister did not have the bill of the phone! I mean, I don't even know where to start on this one. Why would anyone go around carrying the bill of their phone just to lodge an FIR in case of theft of phone! She had the IMEI number and that was all that was needed! But no...no FIR till the bill is checked! And the hard copy that too!
• Eventually, we made a few calls and managed to get through to a senior police officer, who made a call to the police station. The officer who was refusing to file the FIR told this guy on the phone that they may have caught the image of the guy in CCTV cameras. That's when my sister put her foot down and refused to leave till she was shown the CCTV footage to identify the criminal. Must be noted that the cops made no mention of the CCTV footage the entire time when she was trying to file the complaint. And even when she asked to watch it, the cops were reluctant.
• Eventually, my sister and her friend made it to the room where the CCTV footage is stored. By that time, they were joined by their boss. Now, here's the next shocker. In an attempt to convince my sister not to go through the tapes, the police officer on duty told her that there were only 3 cameras in the entire station and so chanced of finding the of camera were slim to none. We found out later that there are actually 32 cameras installed throughout the station.
• Despite all this, the footage wasn't shown to my sister. The were made to wait outside the CCTV room for at least an hour, because the room was occupied by someone else. Now, I can't really blame the police here, because turns out that the room was occupied by a man who had lost his very old father on the station and was trying to find him on the footage. But then again, I don't see why two people can't see the footage simultaneously. There must be multiple monitors, no?
• So feeling all defeated and all, my sister decided to return home, telling the policemen on duty that she would return the next morning with the bill and everything to file an official FIR. By that time, we had managed to pull a few strings. My uncle, who is also a journalist had called the inspector in charge, as had a doctor from the railway hospital. So that's when the inspector assured my sister that he would ensure that the officer in charge in the morning would definitely make an FIR. All this after at least 5 people had made calls to him. Which makes me wonder, what of those people who can't pull any strings?
• So this morning, my daddy and my sister went to the police station again. The officer in charge was evidently briefed about her (and the number of people interested in the case). But that didn't deter him to try and convince my dad to file a lost FIR and not a theft FIR, implying my sister had lost the phone and it hadn't been stolen. He tried to scare them off by saying that a theft complain would cause them to keep making rounds of the court. He also tried to convince my dad to not mention the fact that there was no police officer in the train in the FIR.
• They also saw the CCTV footage which clearly shows a dark man around 25 years of age, wearing a torn yellow shirt with "I love karate" written on the back get into the train and jump out, and run into the Subway where he switches off the phone. 
• Eventually, my dad had his way and he filed a proper theft FIR. The junior officer who actually wrote down the FIR told him that there is a high probability of the phone being retrieved now that the IMEI number is given. But we are skeptical.

So here's the long and short of it. You can't get your work done by the Mumbai police unless you have some contacts who hold high positions in any police department. You have to pull strings, even to lodge a simple FIR. Also, the police force is filled with these lethargic people who do not want to do a lot of work. In retrospect, maybe I should start listening to the majority of people who curse Mumbai police and stop being all Dumbledore-y, trying to see the good in everyone and giving everyone the benefit of the doubt! And now my sister is smartphone-less for a while. I'm hoping the police will retrieve the phone back and not give her too much trouble now. I mean, she doesn't really deserve this!