- I Paid A Bribe
- 5 years ago
- 1427 views
BRIBERY AND HARRASMENT AT MOOLEHOLE CHECK POST KERALA KARNATAKA BORDER
- Protected Forest and Sanctuaries
- Paid INR 1,000
We a group of 4 friends were travelling from Mysore to calicut on 09/09/19 in our own vehicle. Our enjoyment ended when we were stopped at moolehole check post by one guard. He found one used bottle of whisky in our vehicle. The driver of the vehicle was not drunk though. He took the whisky bottle from the car and asked us to bring driving licence and documents of vehicle to the check post. Even though it was a forest check post we listened to him. When we went there a man who allegedly claiming to be a range officer (without uniform) pointed out a board outside which mentioned NO ALCOHOL, and asked us to pay a fine of Rs.1000/-. We never stopped at the jungle or consumed alcohol inside, all we did is we were unaware of one leftover whisky bottle of last days party in car.
When i said i can pay the fine in court, he said there is no provision for that. I said i dont have any money right now, and then he asked me to pick a bus and go to nearest town and get him the money. I asked him to give me an official acknowledgement for the receipt of money. but he gave me some kind of coupon which clearly shows its fake. Moreover he had written the reason as drinking in NP. When i said that i haven't drank anything inside forest he later accepted to change it to carrying of alcohol inside forest. When i refused to pay the money according to that slip (which was written entirely in Kannada), a goon like guy with long mustache came and started yelling at me saying "who am i to change the rules. this is Karnataka and everything here is like this. you just pay the money and run". I said i wont pay the money unless i get an official receipt, then they said that I will not leave from there unless i pay Rs.1000/-. After 2 hours of long wait, they knew that we were not ready to pay. Suddenly a forest jeep came to us and one official in uniform (having 1 star on shoulder) came yelling and said we misbehaved with the officials there. He snatched the mobile of my friend and asked him to unlock it. Maybe they had assumed that we have taken videos and pics of them bribing. (They stop a lot of vehicles and demand money, especially from goods carriages.) After he found nothing from my friends mobile, he took us to the nearest forest office which was 2 km away. On the way these guys were threatening us that they will file FIR for misbehaving with them and will be sent to jail. when we reached there, the official in uniform was shouting to somebody to seize our vehicle and cover it with a red cloth or so.I was taken to the office(in fact a small house) and the official and the long mustache goon was threatening me that they are taking me to jail. My other 3 friends were taken to another room from which they were brainwashed about consequences we face after filing FIR.
Almost for 10 mins this one star official, the mustache guy and a tall guy harassed me verbally. I got breathing trouble in between and i said i am an asthmatic patient and i need my inhaler which was in my vehicle. They didn't even bothered to open the vehicle and was still yelling.. After brainwashing my friends came to the room where i was taken and they said they will pay the money. Because of that (i believe) they allowed to take the inhaler from vehicle. After i became stable, these people forced my friends to write an apology letter for misbehaving with them (which in fact we didn't even do). Since my friends dont want anymore trouble they accepted it and convinced me to write an apology letter which the uniform guy filmed in his mobile. After i wrote the letter they asked all of us to sign in that letter, and then only they handed over the snatched mobile.
When we asked about the licence and vehicle documents, they said that we can collect from the check post. When we reached there the allegedly claimed range officer said that i have to return the coupon back in which he written the offence.Then only they are going to release the vehicle. But fortunately i have taken a photo of that without noticing. Since we didn't want any more harassment, i accepted to give that back. At the end of the day we lost our time, our money and the whisky bottle too..