Mumbai police track down debt-ridden man after his Twitter post talks of suicide

Mumbai police tracked down a 24-year-old man within hours after he posted a thread on Twitter saying he was planning to end his life and reached out to him for counselling, an official said on Saturday. The debt-ridden man, a resident of Chunabhatti near Chembur in the city, was found in Karjat in Raigad district, said the official.

The man used to sell ‘chikki’, a sweet made from nuts and jaggery or sugar, on trains but had suffered losses and was deep in debt, said the official. The city police’s crime branch came across the man’s long message on Twitter on Friday evening saying he had suffered several setbacks in his business ventures and was planning to take his life.

The crime branch alerted the cyber team of Mumbai police that gathered his contact details and got in touch with him.

“Around 5 am today, we picked him up from Karjat and brought him to our cyber department at BKC for counselling. We learnt that he has a debt of nearly Rs 3 lakh, said the official.