Motorbike accident and brush with cops

There are some interesting brushes with the cops which I have had over the past twenty years or so which I would like to share with you. The rest will be in brief in a subsequent post. My first brush was in 1992 when my brother had come down from Kuwait. He had taken my motorbike and had gone out, on the way back at Mahim, on Senapati Bapat Road – opposite Johnson & Johnson House a transvestite came on the road and threw water (in those days hutments ruled the entire stretch of Senapati Bapat Marg) and this was a routine feature. But this was the first time my brother had taken the motorbike out, he braked when he saw the person coming into the middle of the road and skidded on the water which had been thrown on the road It was around 10.30pm when I got a call from my brother about the accident. I did not tell anybody at home and took a cab to see him. Both his forearms did not have any skin, his right eye had a huge cut at the eyebrow (boxing ishtyle) and his shoulder looked lop sided (his right shoulder bone had broken). He told me that he had run over somebody, and was saved by a plain clothes cop who was witness to the incident and advised him to go to Sion hospital as the transvestite was claiming to have been hurt also. We told the transvestite to come to Sion Hospital and then both of us proceeded to Sion Hospital.

I called my father-in-law who is a surgeon and who used to teach at Sion Hospital in the past. In the meanwhile we went to the OPD for treatment, registered the accident case with the resident cop (the transvestite did not turn up), the resident doctors were saying there is no gauze and bandages to treat the injuries – both of us were going quite mad at the thought. About an hour later around 11.45pm my father-in-law turned up, and on seeing him as if by magic cotton, gauzes, bandages et al suddenly turned up. My brothers hands were bandaged, they did a temporary bandaging of the shoulder, and there was no way they could stitch up his eyes. We went to our father-in-laws nursing home at Chembur, there he stitched up my brothers eye without anesthesia (around 2am now). We came home thereafter and my brother sat recuperating. About a month later a lawyer lands up at home demanding Rs. 10000 for the injury caused to his client, my uncle whose factory had just recently closed roundly cursed the lawyer and told him if he came back again he would go with broken limbs – my brother who still had his clavicle plastered and eye bandaged got up and asked why the lawyers client did not turn up at the hospital. The lawyer had no answer and left. A couple of weeks later, two policemen came and impounded the motorbike saying that they were taking the bike into custody as it was involved in an accident. We told the cops that the accident took place more than a month ago and the bike was already repaired, so what was the point in taking custody of the bike (but the lawyer would probably have bribed the guys). They took custody of the bike and called us to the police station to record our statement. We told the cops that my brother was riding pillion and I was riding the bike and narrated the rest of the incident as above. We told them we followed process and we had third party insurance, the accident victim could claim that. The cops were adamant on releasing the bike, and completely refused to listen to reason, saying that they will release it after the court disposed off the case (in India that could be anytime between 2 and ten years!). We then had no option but to call our uncle, who was then the Municipal Commissioner of Mumbai, he in turn called Mr. Pasricha who was Police Commissioner at that time. The Mahim police station got a call from the police commissioners’ office to release the motorbike as there was no sense in holding a repaired bike. The local cops suddenly were very polite and telling us why we did not tell them of our connections earlier. We told them that we hoped they would use their common sense and see reason, there was no way we would have used connections, if the cops would have just done their job! The end result was that we were allowed to take the bike after an accident case was registered against me (I had the license my brother did not).

We had completely forgotten this incident, when about three years later as I drove into my residence at around 7pm, I found two cops looking for me. I introduced myself and asked them what the problem was, they said that they had come with an arrest warrant as I had not responded to court summons. I asked them politely when the summons were sent, please give me the dates, one of them was playing the bad cop routine and shouting at the top of his voice. I told the other cop to tell his partner to shut up or else the consequences to their career may not be too healthy. I also told them that my mother is always at home and there is no way that any summons would have gone back undelivered. The cops ultimately saw reason and said that I had to attend Bandra Court the next day at 11am, which I agreed to. The next day I went to the court, caught one of the dime a dozen lawyers who hang about outside the court, made a vakalatnama and attended the court. When my case came up, the lawyer was asking me to contest the case (for him it would have been a thousand bucks for every hearing), I asked the judge how it would affect me, he said it is a civil case and it would not affect my passport applications or in any other harmful manner and I just had to pay a Rs. 800 fine. I saw this as a better option than a recurring fee of a thousand bucks, paid up, registered my finger prints in tar (yuck) and left the court.