by Moiz Mannan
In Thiruvananthapuram, the case of the brutal murder of a non-resident Indian came to a close with a court awarding death penalty to the convict; in New Delhi, the court is hearing the case of the murder of an NRI student; in Navi Mumbai, an NRI police station is flooded with alert calls of abductions; in Mohali, an NRI alleges being beaten up by the cops themselves.
There is a noticeable spurt of late in the reporting of crime cases involving NRIs, including those in which they are the accused. Ludhiana Police, for example, have decided to attach the properties of some 25 NRIs, who the cops say are “proclaimed offenders.”
The case of the killing of a Keralite expat on leave from Saudi Arabia in Thiruvanthapuram had shocked the NRI community in 2011. The convict apparently owed huge sums of money to the NRI and ‘settled the debt’ by killing him. He made his victim unconscious by spiking his drink with sleeping pills, hacked him to death and chopped his body into 16 pieces, which were then wrapped in plastic bags and buried in the courtyard of his house. A principal sessions judge last week awarded the death penalty to the first accused and life to his accomplice, but that won’t bring the deceased back.
Another such drama is being played out in Delhi where the court is hearing the case of the mysterious death of an NRI student. Two security guards who allegedly thrashed the boy on the night of September 13 at the South Park Apartments in Kalkaji area in south Delhi were imprisoned in Tihar jail and granted bail on Thursday. Four of the deceased’s friends who were allegedly involved in a drug party before the incident have also been taken into custody by the police.
In Navi Mumbai, personnel at an NRI police station are perplexed after receiving many anonymous calls pertaining to alleged kidnappings of girls. The anonymous callers reported sighting a girl being dragged into a car in the vicinity of a spot with thick bushes that has become a meeting spot for youngsters.
Meanwhile, there were reports from Mohali on Friday that said an NRI man had alleged police brutality. The complainant, an NRI automotive engineer, was on a visit home. His friends claim that he was implicated in a false case, locked up and tortured by the Mohali police at Nayagaon. Later on, they left him unconscious outside the station so that he may be taken away by his family. He claimed he was stripped naked, beaten up for 2 hours, after which a top officer demanded
Rs5m to let him go.
It can be a horrendous experience for an NRI to deal with being involved in such cases. These people can’t stay back in India for the lengthy procedures to be complete, most of them who’ve been away for longer durations are unfamiliar with the practices and norms and all of them are seen as fat cats to exploit by both criminals and law keepers.
In one such case, the Punjab and Haryana High Court had observed: “The tendency and frequency of implicating innocent people falsely with malafide intention by such police officials have been increasing tremendously day by day, which needs to be curbed with a heavy hand. If such a treatment is meted out to an innocent NRI by the uniformed force (police), no non-resident Indian will think of a pleasant tour to motherland… will give a wrong message to the people living permanently on foreign shores.”
State governments have not done enough to make things easy for them, nor have the federal ministers of home or that of Overseas Indian Affairs.
Punjab is at the forefront having set up special police stations in NRI-dominated localities, but not many other states have been active in this regard.
Recently, the state’s Home Department created three new police stations for NRIs at Jalandhar (rural), Gurdaspur and SAS Nagar, initiating the process to reorganise jurisdiction of police stations according to assembly constituencies.
The biggest problem with the system for NRIs is that the federal as well as many state governments have given hollow promises to NRIs and residents alike regarding launch of mechanisms for online registration of complaints.
Filing a criminal complaint against any person requires the presence of the complainant on every date of hearing unless this presence has been exempted by the court for special reasons. No power of attorney works for criminal complaints, only the presence of the complainant is allowed though he can also be represented by a lawyer.
The Haryana government allows filing of grievances of various sorts against government departments on-line. Jalandhar police has an online crime tip page, where people can inform the police about a crime anonymously if they prefer.
They fill in the crime report on an online form and submit it. Maharashtra e-complaint system is for reporting only minor (non-cognisable) crimes. Reporting of crimes like theft, burglary, motor vehicle theft, accident, chain-snatching, assault, rape, murder, attempt to commit murder, robbery, dacoity, extortion etc can only be registered at a police station.
It is high time the federal and state governments give due attention to this pressing need of non-residents so that they would feel secure and cared for in their own country.
