Cops 'demand' Rs 10 lakh bribe for sparing interior designer in cheating case

A day after the Bengaluru police chief suspended four cops for framing a street vendor in a false drugs case, the force has been rocked by another incidence of high-handedness involving its personnel.

The alleged victim in this case is an interior designer who says police threatened him with arrest and extorted Rs 10 lakh from him to settle a business dispute.

Acting on a complaint by Gunjur resident Sudeep V V, 33, the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) has registered a case against four officers from the Whitefield CEN Crime police station.

On Thursday, Bengaluru top cop Kamal Pant suspended a woman inspector and three of her colleagues after an internal inquiry found them guilty of forcing a street vendor to smoke ganja and fixing him in a false drugs case when he failed to pay the bribe.

The key suspect in the new case in also a woman police inspector. In his complaint on July 20, Sudeep has named inspector Renuka, sub-inspectors Naveen and Ganesh and constable Hemanth.

Here’s the chain of events, as per the complaint:

On July 16, four plainclothesmen came to Sudeep’s house and introduced themselves as sub-inspector Ganesh and other staff from the cybercrime police station.

Ganesh told Sudeep they were investigating a cheating case against him and his wife. Swetha Singh, of Haralur, alleged that Sudeep failed to complete the interior design work she had assigned him or return the money. The sub-inspector asked Sudeep to come to the police station with his wife.

When Sudeep insisted on seeing a copy of the FIR, Ganesh allegedly slapped him and threatened to put him behind bars. He took the couple’s phones and hauled them up to the police station.

Around 11.45 am, Renuka, the inspector, called the couple to her chambers and threatened to arrest them. The interior designer denied cheating the client and promised to finish the work or return the money after some time.

At this juncture, Naveen, the other sub-inspector, took the couple to a conference room in the police station and demanded a bribe of Rs 10 lakh. The couple was also asked to pay Rs 5 lakh to the client.

Sudeep borrowed Rs 10 lakh and transferred it to his wife’s account. Police sent a person named Manju with them to the bank. The couple wired Rs 5 lakh to the client and withdrew Rs 5 lakh before going back to the police station.

At the police station, Naveen asked the couple to put the money on a sofa. They did as told. Constable Hemanth took it up and made them sign a statement copy. When the couple was leaving, Ganesh asked them to bring the remaining sum within a day. The next day, around 4 pm, Sudeep met Ganesh and Hemanth at the police station and expressed his inability to pay any more money. The sub-inspector said ‘madam’ was angry he hadn’t made the full payment, referring to the woman inspector.

Sudeep said the same thing to Naveen at the police station on July 19. The cop said Rs 5 lakh had gone to the inspector and other cops didn’t a dime. He asked Sudeep to pay Rs 2 lakh and the rest in two days.

Sudeep recorded the conversation on his phone and submitted it to the ACB along with his complaint.