• I Paid A Bribe
• 14 years ago
• 238 views

MH Police Collecting money from GJ travelers WITHOUT crime

• Police
• Activities on Beat
• Paid INR 22,000

Notice: The bribe amount was the total amount paid overtime not at once but it was paid to same people.

We lived in South Gujarat. My family had to make frequent trips to Mumbai, MH because of my dad’s job meetings and also to pick up NRI relatives and drop them off. As you enter Maharashtra from Gujarat there are several “check points” on the way to Mumbai where a group of cops are hanging out. On every single check point, only 5 or 6 cops are standing and the rest of the team is just sitting and gossiping. The only work they ever did was to stop cars with Gujarat GJ license plate. Our car was stopped by Maharashtra Police at every single check point and if it wasn’t then it must’ve been a missed their eyes or they were too lazy. They never ever stopped any vehicle with Maharashtrian MH license plate but they did stop every single car with GJ license plate.
So what is Maharashtra Police enforcing on those checkpoints? Alcohol? Criminal activities? Illegal transportation? NOTHING. That’s right they were enforcing absolutely NOTHING. Upon stopping the car, they would first tell driver to come out and ask him questions such as “Do you have any alcohol or Drugs?” “Do you have any weapons, bomb, and explosives?”. Not sure about the latter but if he ever said “yes” to the first question, he’d be asked to leave a small stock of alcohol with them, pay the ransom, and he can be off his way. They would not take any actions against him transporting alcohol in Gujarat but they’d actually encourage it. (If you wonder why someone would smuggle alcohol in Gujarat, Gujarat is a dry state and alcohol is banned in the birthplace of Mahatma **********, but not in Maharashtra so they smuggle it in) If he was to say no to it, they’d thoroughly check the car and try to find anything to snatch money from him. If nothing is found as it was the case in our car every time, they asked money for NOTHING. Yes you read that right, they’d ask you for paying money for passing the checkpoint. If you ever try to be brave and say no (as we did once, only once) A police officer threatened my dad to report that we have illegal weapons and explosives in our car. My dad is a businessman and all he deals with is papers and his laptop. He was a business employee and had not even distant connection with guns. We even had permit from GJ officer to enter MH state. When my dad said he doesn’t have anything, the cop told the driver to open the trunk and the cop put his rifle in the trunk and told my dad “it’s there now”. He threatened my dad to arrest him and prove him a terrorist and lock him away in jail. And you might ask why? Because my father refused to pay bribe. As always, we paid them money to “cross checkpoint” and went on our way. Each bribe was about 400 to 500 Rs on every checkpoint totaling over 10,000 Rs. before my found the following way around it.
After this happened so many times, my dad’s paid total of 12,000 Rs. In bribe to licensing officers in Mumbai and got a shiny new license plate that said MH on it instead of GJ. After putting new license plate on the same exact car it became LEGAL in instant, it was never ever stopped at any check points. We sold our car to a travel agent in town because we were moving out of Gujarat. After we moved out of Gujarat, the agent one day called us to tell story about how he has started smuggling alcohol in that car and he is never stopped by MH cops.
Well I guess you can call that redemption.