33 corrupt policemen caught on the hop

The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) has arrested 33 tainted policemen from Mumbai Police in the past six months, sending out a message that the force needs to be cleaned up.

One major reason for many of Mumbai's policemen being caught red-handed for corruption is that they are recovering the large amount of money paid to politicians or senior officers in exchange for a plum posting, says a former police chief of the city.

Julio Ribeiro, ex-police commissioner of Mumbai and former police chief of Punjab, told Gulf News that "there were too many policemen, including officers in the senior rank, who are dishonest compared to the past when such dishonest men could only be counted on your fingers."

Severe action against such corrupt policemen is unheard of and on the contrary honest policemen are shunted out and transferred to remote places as in the case of Sanjeev Dayal, joint police commissioner (administration), he said.

"This honest, upright police officer who has barely spent 15 months in his present post has been transferred to a remote post in Gadchiroli, Vidarbha, only because he did not entertain the request of a state politician in the recruitment of constables in the city police. If the transfer is a punitive action by the government, it is unacceptable to us."

The former police chief is so upset by this move to transfer Dayal that he plans to file a public interest litigation through a little known group called Public Concern for Governance Trust headed by B.G. Deshmukh, former cabinet secretary.

"We have taken up other issues like the transfer of former police chief Ronnie Mendonca from the post of ACB chief, ethics in the medical profession and the next would be corruption in the police force."

Early last week, a major arrest by the ACB was that of a Senior Inspector of the Social Service branch, Mumbai Police, Shankar Mahadik, for threatening a hotel owner and demanding money to hush up a case.

On June 9, the Social Service Branch raided a hotel in Juhu on the grounds that it was running a prostitution racket. But the manager of the hotel and disco filed a complaint that Assistant Commissioner of Police (Enforcement) J.G. Sodhi of the Social Service Branch had demanded Rs1 million for not registering a case against the hotel owner, Dhananjay Shetty.

The complainant also alleged that Mahadik and Inspector Narendra Singh had also asked for Rs 300,000 and Rs 200,000 respectively.

A trap was laid by the ACB and Mahadik was caught while accepting money, numbered notes, from the hotel manager. The next day Singh was nabbed even as Sodhi has been transferred and could be arrested soon.

Meanwhile, on Friday, assistant police inspector Gopinath Chavan of Thane was caught by the ACB while accepting Rs15,000 from a Dombilivili-based builder A D Mhatre. The builder was earlier arrested for kidnapping and raping a girl at gunpoint in 2002.

Chavan , who was investigating the case, demanded money for not revealing the case to the media. Mhatre was later released on bail and the police filed a chargesheet in November. The builder told the ACB that he had paid Rs600,000 to Mhatre and Senior Inspector Shamsher Khan Pathan.

Matters took an ugly turn when Pathan threatened to kill Mhatre in an encounter if he did not pay up Rs15,000.