Feminine instinct and empathy for another woman iA food delivery agent’s instinct and empathy turned her into an unexpected saviour of a woman on the verge of dying by suicide near Vadodara railway station on Friday.
Yashwanti Mishra, 36, noticed the woman in distress while waiting to pick up an order from a restaurant close to the station. Acting with presence of mind, she immediately alerted the police, just moments before the woman could take the extreme step.
Around 3 pm, while Mishra was waiting outside Platform 6 of the railway station, she saw two women engaged in a quarrel with two men. Assuming it was just another public spat, she left to complete her delivery. When she returned around 3.30 pm to wait for her next order, she spotted one of the women sitting outside MS University’s Experimental School. The woman was weeping, talking on the phone, and shaking a water bottle filled with a cloudy liquid. Nearby lay a freshly opened packet of insecticide.
Realising the gravity of the situation, Mishra sensed that the woman was about to harm herself. Though hesitant at first, she gathered courage and decided she could not remain a bystander.
Mishra, who has been working as a food delivery agent for Zomato, said that she “could not turn away” when she saw the woman in distress. “Being a woman, when I saw how anguished the lady was, I could not leave her like that. Moreover, I overheard her speaking over the phone to someone, probably her son, saying that he is not going to see her again… At the same time, she was mixing an insecticide in the water bottle she had in her hand. I knew I had to act but I could not muster the courage to approach her directly,” Mishra said.
Mishra said that she first ran to the traffic police on duty at the spot outside the railway station, who directed her to dial 100 and summon the She Team. “I did as instructed and all the time, I kept an eye on the woman from a distance… She was waiting for the chalk to mix with the water and weeping… Fortunately, the She Team from the Sayajigunj police station arrived within minutes and were able to thwart her suicide attempt,” Mishra said.
Mishra said that after realising that she had averted a suicide attempt, she thanked God for her intitution. “I am glad that I was able to take swift action and call in the police,” she said.
The police team took the woman to the Sayajigunj police station, where the process to note the case and counsel the woman was initiated. The police officer on duty at the station said, “The woman is about 35 years old and has been depressed due to her domestic quarrels with her son and family. She is separated from her husband. The police counsellors have been called in and the teams are speaking to her… Once we have calmed her down, we will allow her to go back to her family if she is willing to. Otherwise, we have given her the option to go to the Sakhi One-Stop Centre for women, where she will be counselled for the next few days.”