Times View

MUMBAI: Piyush had not expected his vacation to end in such a nightmare. After a long journey from his home in Chhattisgarh, he got off at Dadar station only to be picked up by a group of railway policemen who snatched his phone and threatened to arrest him for allegedly having pornographic clips on it. They then extorted money out of him after intimidating him with handcuffs and belts inside a locked-up police chowky.The IIT-Bombay third year student (20), who returned from a summer break on Wednesday afternoon, said, "I was stopped by two policemen. One of them asked me to open my bag and rummaged through my belongings while the other took my phone and started playing with the keypad."When they found nothing suspicious in the bag, they asked Piyush (name changed) to shut it. When he asked for his phone back, they took him to the chowky on the station platform. "I wondered what was wrong but they started talking roughly. They took me to a small room where another policeman was seated. He said they had found porn clips on my phone and I could go to jail for five years and be fined Rs 1 lakh," recalled Piyush.They pulled out laminated paper clips of people who they claimed had been nabbed for storing porn on their phone. Piyush demanded they show him what they had found on his phone. "They showed me the phone for a fleeting second. I didn't notice anything. Then, they pulled out a belt and a pair of handcuffs. I was terrified. I didn't know what was going on, or what I should do."The policemen started demanding Rs 10,000 to settle the matter, claimed Piyush. "I told them that I just had a little more than Rs 2,000 on me. They took the money. Then they noticed an ATM card in my wallet. One of the policemen changed into civilian clothes and took me to a nearby ATM. I withdrew another Rs 5,000 and handed it to him. He demanded to see my bank balance and when he noticed I had about 8,000 rupees there, he demanded more money," said Piyush.The engineering student pleaded and said his parents had filled his account because he needed to pay the fees. "Then the policeman agreed to let me go." They told Piyush they would delete the porn clips from his phone to spare him further trouble.Piyush said he didn't know whether to feel relieved at being let go, or cheated, or angry. He went to Powai where he related his experience at the station to the dean of students' affairs, Prakash Gopalan. The dean called in IIT-Bombay's security personnel. "We contacted the senior inspector at the Powai police station to help lodge a complaint and recover the student's money. He in turn contacted the Dadar GRP office," said Gopalan.Accompanied by the security staff, Piyush went back to Dadar station. Fearing that the matter might make its way to the top, the policemen returned his money. "They requested that I don't file a complaint and offered to give me another Rs 6,000. I refused. Finally they paid me Rs 1,000 more for the 'inconvenience' caused and apologized too," said Piyush.He realized that this wasn't the first time the policemen had pulled a trick like this. "The entire episode was so perfectly set up." Shivaji Shinde, senior inspector of GRP at Dadar station, said that although there was no formal complaint against the policemen who had taken money from Piyush, they had been moved to another post. Railway police commissioner Tukaram Chavan said he had often warned his men not to check passengers' mobile phones or laptops. He promised to conduct a departmental inquiry.This paper will follow the story to see if action is taken against these as-yet-unnamed policemen.Such cases of intimidation and extortion are all-too commonplace— it’s just that this time the policemen made the mistake of picking on a student from one of the world’s most elite education institutes, instead of poor, helpless people from the margins of society. Merely taking disciplinary action against the errant policemen won’t be justice enough. They have not only violated the privacy of a citizen without provocation, they are also guilty of wrongful harassment and extortion. This calls for prosecution of the individual policemen for these criminal offences. Moreover, the victim should be entitled to file for damages in a civil case against the railway police, just as Krittika Biswas is doing for wrongful arrest and detention in New York. Only if both the individual wrongdoers and the institution they represent face serious consequences, will there be a deterrent effect.