Comment Piece | Pay Money for Love

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If you think love has no boundaries then think again. Young couples, while venturing out, are known to avoid their parents’ eyes. But now it is the greedy policeman who they have to be cautious of. They are playing the role of moral guardians by harassing young couples to extract money from them.

A respondent from Pune, writing on our website, said that he had to pay Rs.500 as a bribe for travelling with his girlfriend. Once he was travelling with his lover, a police constable took him aside and snatched away all the necessary documents from him. Asking for his documents, the police officers demanded a bribe of Rs.1,000 otherwise they were threatened that would inform their parents about their whereabouts. The respondent asked a question on our website, “Please let me know if having a girlfriend is a crime?”.

“Police asked a bribe of Rs.1000 for driving late with my boyfriend and threatened to put us in a jail”, a respondent from Bangalore sharing her experience wrote on our website.

Another young couple from Bangalore faced worse harassment. The couple was having a regular chat in their area. Policemen, who noticed them, warned them and started misbehaving with the girl. “Cops threatened to go to her parents and even felt her leg when I was dealing with them.” The harassment ended after I paid Rs.600 to them, he adds.

This is what is witnessed across the country. Consider the experience of this boy who had to bribe a senior inspector for allowing the boy to sit with his girlfriend at Bolgatty palace ground in Kochi. He was deeply ashamed of the situation as he wrote to us, “I am really ashamed to be here in Cochin...”.