May 7 2009 The Unwelcomed Visitors May Strike Again

I was talking on May 1 2009 about the visit by the LIU-Local Intelligence Unit of the Police regarding Manoj’s passport application and the subsequent interest in finding a foreign person staying here.

For the past few days our landlord has been on edge about this. These LIU guys said when they left the last time that they would be coming back to talk further. That usually means some cash will have to exchange hands. I don’t want to accuse these guys of anything as nothing has been said though.

The usual way these things go (as I have seen personally and been informed by others) involves veiled references, glaring glances and a lot of huffing and puffing with nothing definite-that means nothing usable in a court regarding a charge of soliciting a bribe-being said. The police are being a lot more careful in some areas since press have been conducting sting operations and a fair number of cops have lost jobs and even been jailed for taking bribes caught on video.  After the huffing and puffing part the nice guy approach is used and they say they only want to help you out of your predicament and that they have the power to “fix” things.  That’s when the bargaining starts. It’s not only police but gov’t officials and anyone with any small iota of power to “fix” a problem they have invented for you.

Right now Manoj is out of town as he had to attend a wedding but he is expected back this evening.  But he just called me and said the LIU guy (I don’t know which one) called our landlord and said he’d be stopping by again this evening. So I guess the bargaining the conversation will begin.

I am so tempted to have a lawyer there. I’d rather see the money go to fighting for people’s rights against this corruption than in the pocket of these kind of guys. The situation is however that right now they have the power to accept or deny the passport application and that is additional leverage if everything else falls through.

My landlord, if put under duress has the right to make and RTI-Request to Information from the FRO and the police regarding tenancy issues and the Foreigner Registration Act. He can get particulars of the conditions of the use of the Form C as well as any penalties for non-compliance as well as how these penalties are used and under what jurisdiction:the FRO or the LIU which are different divisions.

I’ve spent more time than I’d like looking up all the applicable laws online and consulting with places that have this information. I know it won’t really make any difference. If I bring it up with these guys they’ll get angry and make things worse until they can be reprimanded which could take years. And that will make it hard on the people here too.  They can mess around with my visa too and give me a hard time to get another one so I have to be careful.

You’d think with tourism in decline drastically here due to the economy, terrorism and swine flu they’d want to keep a tourist or two around rather than giving them such a hard time. Yeah the cynicism is coming out now. But then again maybe these guys won’t show up. They’ve really taken their time to get around to even making contact (almost a week). Usually these things are quick and dirty and all parties walk away-no run in their own directions afterwards.

In any case I’ve packed my bags and will check into a guest house (and fill a Form C) if they get ugly. Then there’s no more situation for them to bother with.  Part of the things too is if it seems like its going to be too much work for too little reward then the situation just sort of drops off. (We encountered such a situation last year and my persistance (and lack of anger, and endless patience) wore out a whole cadre of uniforms until they finally told us to get out of town. I”ll write that episode up soon and backdate it to last fall when it happened. It was rather amusing even though we were at the police station in that well known tourist town for nearly 8 hours.

Now recall I am a middle aged woman from Canada with no interest in criminal or other such things and only here for trekking and doing my writing and stuff. I keep my nose out of local politics, business, gossip and the like. So that’s the reason I’ve catagorized this as Advice for Travellers. You could just be minding your own business and come up against something completely unexpected. It happens all the time. So I guess that’s a warning.

So much for “The Guest Is God”.