Column

I was in the backseat and my car was idling at a stop sign when a van jack-knifed through my car’s fender. By the time the van driver stubbed the brake, his vehicle had already stopped, its screech silenced inside the boot of my car. Fear and rage dribbled on my forehead, like a marathon runner’s sweat. Then the very next thought brought my feelings plunging to the warm assurance of help: I would have to go a police station!

Police officers had become my heroes; had they not become yours, too, after 26/11? I told myself as my car clunked its way to the Agripada police station: “This would be nothing for the brave men of the force.” After all, the police ranks had glittered with extraordinary men like Tukaram Omble who took on Ajmal Kasab. Omble had a lathi and Kasab an assault rifle. You know the rest of the story: we lost Omble, but we got Kasab. The interrogations could reveal insights which might allow us to ensure that policemen of Omble’s character are never lost again.

At any rate, I went to the police station willing to salute every cop I met. I was in fact embarrassed to trouble them about something so trivial. But the triviality that chains the Mumbai police to the most absurd babugiri besmirched the respect and gratitude that real men like Omble had evoked among Mumbaikars. Omble’s blood is being desecrated by the most profane officiousness of petty cops who survive in their jobs.

It turns out that the area around the Mahalaxmi station is the most inauspicious site for an accident. The unfortunate zone is controlled by four police stations. If you are knocked down somewhere north of the station, then your complaint has to be filed at the NM Joshi police station. If a biker has smashed your foot south of the station, help must be sought at the Tardeo police station. But if a truck has crushed your bike in the eastern part of the zone, you must drag the wreck to the Agripada police station. The NM Joshi Marg police station is supposed to offer succour to those who have been wounded on the west of the city.

But forget succour, you won’t even get a sympathetic hearing. As I discovered, cops will try to shove you from their station, citing jurisdiction limitations. You could try telling them of the state government’s injunction that no police station can refuse to file an FIR on those flimsy grounds. But in order to tell something to a cop, you need a cop. At the Agripada police station, for example, the cop in command, one Suresh S Kamble, asked me to wait for a minute. I endured the ignominy of being consigned to a bench for 30 minutes. When Kamble finally came to me, he said, “Why do you want to complain about such a small accident? Cough out some money, and a mechanic will set the car right.”

When I insisted that I wanted to lodge a complaint, he became aggressive. Then I began to drop names after which Kamble registered the complaint. Why should a common citizen have to display his contacts to have a simple FIR registered? Why should the cops use jurisdiction as an excuse to ward people off? Why should jurisdiction be so complicated; should all citizens be required to memorise the arcane rules? Only the government can answer those questions. But if the cops were to ask why citizens hate them so much, the answers are too stupefying and too obvious.