The Scene of the Crime-Take 3 (Police Station)

 

Thursday, I make a 2nd trip to the same old Police Station.

 
12noon:
2 new faces of ‘officers’ greeted me, as I’d expected. I had a terrible experience with the 2 old faces the last day. I’d made sure I carried everything today, the Railway ticket I used to travel on Sunday and the mobile receipt.
The new faces comprised an SI (2 stars, remember the tip? :P) and a Head Constable. I repeated the entire crap to the SI Manekar. A small twist in the story though. This time my answer to the ‘Are you working’ question was “I’m studying for PGDBM”. I was planning to do a Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management (PGDBM), but I’ve finally called it off because I believe God has different plans for me, than becoming a CEO.
Anyways I think I’d be forgiven for that lie as it helped me avoid a greater sin-bribe. I personally try my best to avoid a bribe. It’s not really about the money. I wouldn’t like to give away even a 10-rupee note as a bribe. Though, once when I was caught driving without license/vehicle papers at 11pm, I did pay 75 bucks instead of the 400 he was asking for a pavti (receipt):P They ask any damn amount. I think it’s because I don’t know the rules. I could’ve argued with him if I knew what fines are like.

 
I’ve never seen an ad for police recruitment. I guess it would be something like this…
Salary: Basic Rs5000 + ‘incentives’ 🙂
Like BPO ads seen these days. Salary: Rs10000 + incentives. Hehe.

 
So let me come back to the Police Station. When they hear that the complainant’s studying, ‘they’ aren’t that adamant on getting ‘something’. But they try their best. 😛 I told him that I don’t have the money. Also told that I’d met Dhingre sahib the last day and he’d told me to just bring the ticket and mobile receipt and the FIR would be lodged. I lost count of the number of times i lied now 😛
Since I wasn’t ready to pay up, he told me that I was too late for the FIR. So “Get an affidavit stating that you were traveling by train, and you lost your mobile on this date and this place.”

 
Amidst all this, I saw 2 boys aged less than 20, being dragged inside into the other room. Their clothes were removed and they were being hit by the policemen. I’d never seen policemen hitting ‘criminals’ in real before. And I now realized that they hit pretty bad. They were using something which looked like a large leather flap to hit them.
I headed to the Collector’s office which is a kilometer away. After all the ordeal of getting an affidavit from the Collector’s office, I returned to the police station.

 
2.15PM:
The policemen were having their lunch. The SI had gone out for lunch. He came back in a few minutes. He started reading my affidavit. He said to the lady Constable ‘Make an application on his behalf saying he lost his mobile, mentioning all details. Mention that the cell was lost, not stolen’.
‘If you mention that the cell was stolen, I can’t give you an FIR statement to you now.’ He said to me. I thought I might need an FIR statement so that I could give it to my Mobile Service Provider for blocking my SIM card.
I feel if the FIR mentions the cell as stolen, they might’ve to investigate compulsorily.
The lady also gave me a statement with stamp mentioning that my cell has been lost.

The SI now tried to emotionally blackmail me saying ‘You gave the lawyer 150 bucks. We did so much for you. Nothing for us, huh?’
I repeated that I was studying and blah blah…
“Since your work has been done now, you have forgotten us, right? That’s not fair.” he said.
When he saw that I was reluctant he said “Anyways, go..go..”
I tried to make a sad face and got the heck out of the room, once and for all.
By the way, my watch showed 3PM.

(Names have been changed to protect identity & protect myself 🙂 )