Bribe? It’s mamool, NGOs find

Bribe? It’s mamool, NGOs find
Friday January 4 2008 07:30 IST

Soumya Menon
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BANGALORE: Rashmi (name changed), who went to lodge a dowry harassment complaint at a police station in Bangalore, narrates her frustrating experience with the cops.

They refused to take the complaint, by trotting out excuses like ‘‘the inspector is away….we are busy’’. She later learnt that her husband had bribed officials to prevent a complaint from being filed.

After intervention by a senior officer a case was registered. Studies by NGOs show this is not rare. Corruption and an unhealthy interaction between complainants and police discourage people from approaching the police even when they are in distress.

A Ravindra, retired chief secretary and former director, Public Affairs Committee (PAC), which conducted a survey, said people hesitate to lodge complaints against policemen, as they fear harassment.

‘‘The survey revealed that people initially don’t admit they faced problems while lodging a complaint. Under the Coalition Against Corruption project, there are hardly any complaints against the police,’’ he said.

According to Ravindra, some indicators of corruption in the police department are: the kind of powers given to the Station House Officer (SHO) (usually the police inspector); and the system’s functioning (includes investigation, time taken to register an FIR, the number of complaints accepted by the police station and the kind of action taken on a case).

‘‘Policemen scramble for postings at police stations with a high hafta factor (extortion money). Some officers even pay out huge sums of money for such stations,’’ said Ravindra.

Chief researcher of PAC Sita Shekar said most victims fear complaining as they fear consequences. According to a PAC study, at least 40 per cent of the complainants have problems during interaction with police.

It shows that at least 30 percent of the people say they had to pay a bribe on demand to get their work done. Researches confirm a high level of corruption among constables.