News

DNA reports:

Sources said a gang of women thieves operating at the Thane station area is increasingly targeting, apparently well-to-do people walking out of the railway station and rob them of valuables and cash. According to information, these women after identifying their target deliberately bump into them and begin shouting for help. The police constables present nearby immediately approach them and start threatening the victim. In full view of the crowd that accumulates to witness the commotion, the policemen whisk away the victim and the woman concerned on the pretext of taking action against him for eve-teasing.

However, on their way to the police station, the constables start negotiating with the victim threatening him with police action followed by legal complications.

A terrified victim usually agrees to settle the matter by paying up. After ‘settling’ the matter, policemen and the lady return to the station in search of their next victim.

In an earlier piece, The Matunga Racket, I’d written about similar blackmail carried out by the police in the context of Section 377. But it isn’t only laws against victimless crimes that the police can exploit to harass people, but absolutely any law out there, as this report illustrates. It’s all a revenue stream.

Two incidents involving cops. One:

Close to 2,000 cops spent the entire Sunday night hunting for a cabbie who had stolen an expensive mobile phone belonging to member of Parliament and yesteryear actor Vinod Khanna’s son, Saakshi. Nakabandis were put in place across south Mumbai and the suburbs and a message was flashed to all police stations and patrolling vehicles. The taxi’s owner was traced in no time and the mobile was recovered from the cabbie’s house in Behrampada, Bandra (east) on Monday afternoon.

Two:

Thirty-five-year Savita Jangam, a resident of Worli Village, lives in constant fear. She can hardly sleep. Savita was like another normal woman till a few days ago, but an incident on April 8 made her lose her mental balance. She was stripped, beaten and paraded half-naked by villagers and hung on a tree for nine hours at her native village in Bhor, Pune, before being rescued by her husband.

[…]

“We approached the local police station in Bhor on the same day, but initially, the officials refused to register our complaint,” [her husband] Gopal said.

Needless to say, the location of the above incidents is irrelevant. In this country, if you’re rich and influential, the police are like your personal servants. If you’re poor, you don’t exist. That’s all there is to it.

The shameless Alistair Pereira, sentenced to six months of jail for running over seven people, still denies that he did any wrong. DNA reports:

When DNA caught up with Pereira on Friday, he scoffed, “I will have to go in for six months, all thanks to the media.”

So now you know the truth. The media was driving the car.

Meanwhile, Salman Khan is a hero. Joy to the world.

An ice-cream vending contractor caught raping a six-year-old girl at Nithari was lynched by a mob yesterday. Apart from the anger you’d expect the crowd to feel, what else did the lynching demonstrate? Their lack of faith in the cops and the justice system, that’s what.

The mob might well have felt, “The courts will take years to punish this man, if they ever do at all. Why should be not take matters into our own hand and ensure that justice is done?”

Now, I’m against mobs and lynching and so on. But how do you answer that question?