This is to bring to your notice the harassment meted out to me by the Railway Police at Mumbai the details of which are as below.

I am a resident of Surat and was travelling from Delhi to Surat on 7/5/2011. I had booked an Air India flight from Delhi to Mumbai and a connecting train from Mumbai to Surat (Rajdhani Express). However the flight was delayed by 5 hours and so I was able to reach Mumbai Central only by 6: 15 PM by which time my train had already left.

I tried the current reservation and got a ticket for Jaipur Superfast express which leaves at 6: 50 PM. With only 20 minutes left for the train to leave I was approaching the platform when I was confronted by a policeman at the entrance of the platform (who was not in uniform) who asked me to open my bag. I had a laptop bag and a suitcase. I informed him that my suitcase has already been screened at the airport and showed him the seal which was still intact. Still I opened my suitcase. He checked it and found nothing objectionable. He then started checking my laptop bag and got hold of a CD. He asked me what it was. I told him it was a Malayalam movie. He took me to the RPS office at the station where two more people joined him. They told me that they suspected that this was a blue film and that they will be testing the CD. I offered them to play the CD in my laptop but the CD being very old and having been in my laptop bag unnoticed for a very long time could not be played.

They told me that I will be detained at the police station and that the CD will be checked in a supercomputer and if found objectionable a case would be registered. I told them that this was not a blue film. Even assuming that it was, possessing of CD for private viewing is not a crime. Trading was a crime. They said that they will be filing a case on court on Monday and asked me to tell all this to the judge. Till then he said I will be under their custody and asked me to contact my lawyer. I do not know any lawyer in Mumbai.I showed them my passport , my driving licence, my PAN card saying that they can take a Xerox of the same and issue me a summons if they put a case . This was also not listened to.
With only 5 minutes left for my train to leave, I was in a desperate situation. To let me go, they literally asked me to show my purse and took all the money in it leaving just enough for me to get home. This was just daylight robbery by persons who are supposed to protect the law. They took full advantage of my urgency to fleece money from me and in spite of knowing that they do not have a case against me, I had to bend to their demands.

I discussed this with some of my friends and came to know about two more people in Surat who had faced similar situations. One person who had come from abroad was questioned regarding the foreign currency available with him and when 5 minutes was left for his train to leave he was asked to handover Rs 5000 and go or that he will be detained for questioning. Another person was questioned in a similar way about some jewellery present in his bag. As a result those people has stopped taking the train from Mumbai instead they hire a taxi.

I would request your advice on the following matters so that in future we are able to face such situation with more confidence.
a) Do the police have power to detain any one on flimsy grounds like this?
b) Is there a helpline number where we can call up at the time we are subjected to such type of harassment? If so, I would request you to kindly provide the same.
c) If they detain a person in such a way and later have no case against him, can he file a case against the police for harassment and mental torture?