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By:

Quaid Najmi

4 January 2025 at 3:26:24 pm

Mumbai local train murder stuns commuters

Mumbai: A routine commute to home on a dark rain-soaked night in a Mumbai local turned into a nightmare when a 22-year-old commuter was allegedly stabbed to death inside a first-class compartment following a heated argument over shutting the train door, late on Tuesday. The victim, identified as Mayank Lohar, 22, worked as a salesman with a private company in Andheri and lived in Virar, nearly 60 km from Churchgate. According to Western Railway (WR) and Government Railway Police (GRP)...

Mumbai local train murder stuns commuters

Mumbai: A routine commute to home on a dark rain-soaked night in a Mumbai local turned into a nightmare when a 22-year-old commuter was allegedly stabbed to death inside a first-class compartment following a heated argument over shutting the train door, late on Tuesday. The victim, identified as Mayank Lohar, 22, worked as a salesman with a private company in Andheri and lived in Virar, nearly 60 km from Churchgate. According to Western Railway (WR) and Government Railway Police (GRP) officials, the shocking incident took place aboard the Churchgate-Nalasopara Fast Local (Train No. 90663), which left Churchgate at 10.05 pm and reached Andheri at 10.42 pm. As the train pulled out of Andheri, heavy rains started lashing the city. Lohar reportedly requested a fellow commuter standing near the doorway to shut the door, as rainwater was blowing into the compartment and inconveniencing those seated inside. The other commuter, wearing a dark shirt and trousers, allegedly refused and it started a heated verbal exchange which quickly escalated into a raging argument as the train raced through Goregaon and Malad. Then, in a horrifying burst of violence, the suspect allegedly pulled out a knife and repeatedly stabbed Lohar in the abdomen and chest as the train zoomed past Kandivali. Stunned Silence The other terrified commuters watched in stunned silence as the attack unfolded and ended within a matter of minutes claiming the young boy. Writhing in pain and bleeding profusely, Lohar collapsed onto the compartment floor as panic gripped the passengers and they scrambled away from the attacker, who reportedly continued to pace about menacingly. Eyewitnesses later said that as the train slowed while entering Borivali station’s Platform No. 6, the suspect calmly jumped off, ran up the staircase and vanished into the wet darkness. When the train halted at Borivali at 11.04 pm, the other commuters immediately alerted railway authorities. WR, GRP and medical personnel rushed to the platform within minutes with emergency equipment, medicos, porters and a stretcher. Lohar was first rushed to the station’s Emergency Medical Room, where a doctor examined him and declared him dead. His body was later shifted to Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Shatabdi Hospital in Kandivali for post-mortem and other legal formalities. Special Teams The brutal killing sent shockwaves across Mumbai’s suburban rail network. In the morning, Borivali GRP Senior Police Inspector Datta Khuperkar said seven special teams were formed and nearly 400 CCTV camera feeds were scrutinised to trace the suspect. The attacker was captured on multiple surveillance cameras, cool and casual, without a hint of remorse, walking out of Borivali station after the attack. Following an intensive 14-hour manhunt, he was tracked down and arrested at Panvel in Raigad. The Borivali GRP has registered a murder case and launched a detailed investigation. As news of the shocking crime spread amid Wednesday’s torrential rains, commuters expressed outrage and disbelief that a trivial dispute over closing a train door could culminate in such a savage killing. Pall of gloom in Virar Early Wednesday morning, the Lohar family of Virar was devastated on learning about the horrifying killing of their favourite child, Mayank in a train altercation. His parents, three brothers and a sister could barely speak, with his wailing mother demanding “he must be hanged”. Consoling each other, one sister lamented how he was a quiet boy, rarely stepped out of the house without any reason and had his entire life before him that was snuffed out. Venting their ire, they asked “where was the police, why the other commuters didn’t help him” and warned that today it was their son, “next it can be anybody’s son”. The massive dragnet Barely hours after the brutal killing of Mayank Lohar, the Borivali GRP launched one of the biggest manhunts to track and apprehend the suspected killer from Panvel in Raigad district. He was later identified as one Roshan Suvarna, 30, of Mira Road, running a barcode business, informed Borivali GRP Senior Police Inspector Datta Khuperkar. “We formed seven teams with around 10 police personnel supervised by 15 officers. They scanned footage from over 400 CCTVs to trace the regular movements of the accused. The GRP stations of Borivali, Andheri, Mira Road and Nalasopara were involved in the search. We deployed tech-intel to scour his mobile and with help of our network of informers, finally caught him in Panvel,” a weary but victorious Khuperkar told ‘The Perfect Voice’. He added that after completing the legal and medical formalities, he will be produced before a Borivali Court for remand.

From Headspace to System Space: Designing the Cognitive Off-Ramp

Scaling begins the day your head stops being the system.


Over the past three weeks, we’ve explored the hidden traps of cognitive load. The inbox inside a founder’s head. The debt created when decisions stay in memory. The illusion of delegation that doubles the load instead of reducing it.


This week, I want to close the arc by showing what happens when the system finally begins to carry the weight.


At “The Factory,” our composite SME case, the founder had built a capable team. Managers understood their functions. Processes were documented. Tools were live. And yet … the company still slowed whenever he wasn’t available.


The problem wasn’t team capability. It was the absence of exits. There were no structured pathways for decisions to move out of his head and into the system.


Scaling begins when those exits are built.


Invisible bottleneck

Every leader knows the feeling: the team can act, but they still wait. A shipment ready to go. A proposal ready to send. A hiring decision everyone agrees on.


And yet the pause lingers: “Better confirm first.”


The irony is that leaders often read this as team weakness. In truth, it’s a system design issue. If every road still leads back to your brain, you haven’t built a company. You’ve built an extension of yourself.


That’s not scale. That’s fragility.


Designing off-ramps

At The Factory, the turnaround began with one question: “How do we build exits?”

The answer was deceptively simple: design cognitive off-ramps visible, structured mechanisms that allow decisions to leave the founder’s headspace and enter system space.


The team introduced three shifts:

  • Role charters that made ownership explicit, so decisions didn’t bounce upward by default.

  • Decision ladders that defined who could decide what … and when to escalate.

  • Escalation windows that created clarity: if the founder didn’t respond in 24 hours, the team could proceed.


Each design was an exit. Each exit moved mental RAM out of the founder’s head and into visible system pathways.


Mental RAM release

The most immediate effect was relief. The founder no longer carried every loop. For the first time in years, he wasn’t replaying vendor negotiations at night or tracking overtime approvals in his mind.


This is what we call mental RAM release the deliberate freeing of leadership attention through structure.


Without exits, the founder’s brain was the server. With exits, the system absorbed the load.


System absorption

The deeper change was cultural. Teams stopped waiting.


When charters, ladders, and windows were visible, hesitation dropped. Managers acted with confidence because they weren’t guessing invisible rules. They could point to the structure and say: “This is mine. This is how we move.”


That’s system absorption: when the organisation itself takes in cognitive load and prevents rebound into memory.


At The Factory, velocity doubled. Not because the founder worked harder, but because the system carried what his head once held.


Human confession

When I asked the founder what felt different, he smiled: “For the first time, I wasn’t the bottleneck. I wasn’t scared the company would stall without me.”


That’s the moment scale becomes real. Not when dashboards glow green. Not when teams are hired. But when your brain stops being the system.


Final reflection

Cognitive load is invisible until it breaks. For many leaders, the real barrier to growth isn’t markets, funding, or even talent. It’s the quiet truth that every road still runs through their head.


Designing cognitive off-ramps is how companies escape that trap.

  • Role charters.

  • Decision ladders.

  • Escalation windows.


Dashboards that replace midnight pings.


These aren’t administrative tools. They’re structural exits. And every exit frees mental RAM that leaders desperately need. Scaling without chaos begins when the system, not the founder, becomes the place where decisions live.


Read more in-depth insights at: www.ppsconsulting.biz/blog


(Rashmi Kulkarni is Co-founder at PPS Consulting. She helps growth-stage founders design execution systems that free leadership headspace and build organizational velocity. Views personal.)

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