Arun M By

KOCHI: The city’s prime hangout, Marine Drive, has become a hotspot of moral policing. Be it a real or a fake cop, their target is couples and youths, and students are feeling unsafe visiting the popular promenade of Kochi.

According to many city residents, the good initiative of the City Police to check crime by deploying Shadow Police personnel has turned villain here as fraudsters posing as shadow cops give the couples a harrowing experience by extorting money from them after threatening to book them for ‘immoral activities’.

Majority of the visitors ask why shadow policing is being done in public places like Marine Drive, where there are no possibilities for immoral activities. However, City Police Commissioner M P Dinesh points out the necessity of shadow policing in public spots as majority of drug cases and frauds were spotted at these places. “Most of the ganja seizures, other than large-scale, are from public places as the drug peddlers use the advantage of not getting noticed by the authorities easily,” he said.

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The other day, the police nabbed two youths - Manu S Menon, 25, hailing from Velloor in Vaikom and Ranjith K V, 32, from Thaliparamba, Kannur - while they were attempting to extort money from the students of St Albert’s College posing as police officers. According to the police, the accused used to mainly target couples visiting Marine Drive walkway.

Earlier, a couple had a harrowing experience from a civil police officer as well. The cop snatched Rs 5,000 from them at Marine Drive on December 10, 2015. As per the complaint lodged with the police, the victim, along with a woman friend, was sitting at Marine Drive when the accused, T A Ansari, who was a security guard of High Court Judge Abraham Mathew, threatened to register a case against them and asked them to come with him to the police station.

The cop, flashing his identity card, demanded money for saving them from the ‘immoral case.’ He claimed that he was on special duty following the ‘Kiss of Love’ protest and had been directed to book at least two cases a day. Finally, the cop settled for Rs 2,000, but when he saw five Rs 1,000 notes in the victim’s wallet, he snatched the money and fled.