‘The day cops almost abducted us...': Noida journalist shares ordeal
In the eight years I've been here, five in Delhi as a student and three in Noida after I started working, I've felt nothing but the welcoming embrace of this megapolis. That changed in minutes on Thursday (June 19) afternoon in a manner I'd never imagined.
My husband and I were on our way back home from Film City. Both of us have our offices there, but Thursday was his day off, so he had come to pick me up. We had stopped at the Indian Oil petrol pump in Sector 38, right beside GIP Mall, to refuel the car when a group of strangers – three men and a woman – walked up to the car and knocked on the window on the driver's side.
Their eyes were fixed on my husband. "Is your name R***l?" the man in front, who was wearing a yellow T-shirt, asked.
"Yes," he said, though taken aback that the stranger knew his name. What followed that instinctive affirmation is stuff that one sees in movies and sometimes read about on the pages of a newspaper. Consuming it from a distance is one thing, being in it quite another.
As soon as my husband confirmed his name, the man who had made the enquiry ordered him to step out. Confused, both of us asked why. "Come out", they barked. We asked why again, but before we knew it, one of the men had opened the driver's door, grabbed my husband and tried to drag him out.
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This was happening in daylight, at a public place, and in full public view. But the strangers accosting us were unfazed.
Had I seen any of them before? No. Did my husband know them? No. Had we bumped into them somewhere and this was a road rage – the kind we regularly read about in Delhi-NCR – happening to us? No, we had driven to the pump without incident. As thoughts raced through my mind, I felt a chill. This, I feared, was a kidnapping.
My news reporter instincts kicked in, so I switched on my phone's video recorder.
As my husband resisted attempts by the man to drag him out, he called his companion for assistance. Meanwhile, the woman had come to my side of the car and asked me to step out. I refused. She insisted. "Who are you, what's this about?" I kept asking her. "Come out" is all she would say.
Eventually, she replied, "Hum Delhi Police se hain, aap bahar to aao (You come out, we are from Delhi Police)" She flashed an identity card as she said so, but I couldn't see it properly and couldn't be sure if these were genuine police officers or part of some extortion racket pretending to be cops.
The latter seemed likely.
I identified myself as a journalist with TOI, pleaded with her to speak gently, and explain what was happening to us. But my words made no difference. They just got more brazen. The man in the yellow shirt used all his strength to drag my husband out, pulling him by the belt and hustling him towards a car parked nearby, a Tata Nexon with an HR26 number plate. It did not look like a police vehicle. Both of us screamed.
"This is not even a police car!" My husband asked them to show a warrant if they were cops, but they didn't have anything to show.
I was shaking in panic by then. I gathered my voice and addressed the man in the yellow shirt this time. "Can you please tell us what has happened?" I asked him. As he tried to bundle my husband into the HR26 vehicle, I tried to stop him. "Isko kheencho na peechhe se (pull her away)", he told the woman who had identified herself as a Delhi Police cop.
At this point she asked my husband, "App R***l J**n ho na?"
"No, I'm R***l S**a, a journalist based in Noida," he cried out. Meanwhile, I retrieved my press ID from my phone's back cover and showed it to them. That's the first time they paused. They asked to see my husband's ID. We showed them, plus his Aadhaar and PAN cards.
This is when two realisations struck together. We realised these were perhaps indeed cops, not criminals trying to kidnap us.
And they realised they had made a mistake.
"Are you from Haryana?" the woman asked my husband. "Both of us are from West Bengal," he told her. "We work here in Noida." She then looked at his phone and asked him, "What phone is this? Is this an iPhone?" she asked next. My husband showed it to her – it was a OnePlus.
The woman then looked at her phone (later, I learnt this was to check the identity of a cybercriminal the cops were chasing).
Her demeanour changed. She became calmer and addressed us politely, identifying herself as a sub-inspector from the Delhi Police cyber crime branch at Shahdara police station. She explained the criminal they were looking for was a namesake of my husband.
She showed us and the petrol pump staff his photo as well. The pump staffers pointed out it was obvious just from the photo that my husband was a different person. Why did a police team, trained for this, get even basic identification wrong?
"Ye aapka name match kar gaya naa, isiliye aapko uthaye hum (Your name matched, this is why we picked you up)…" the SI told my husband.
"Imagine the number of R****s we have in India. How can you make the basic mistake of verifying the full name?" he asked. They had no replies.
We demanded an explanation, pointing out what had just happened was a clear case of harassment – besides being humiliating for both of us – but they refused to record a video statement. Finally, they hastily scribbled an apology note, quickly got into the HR26 vehicle and left.
I had by then called up Noida police officers and also the Shahdara SHO and confirmed the trio who had ambushed us were indeed cops.
Later, we drove home in silence, the experience of the place we now call home largely altered in our minds.
I thought all evening if I should put this behind me and move on. I understood that the cops had made a mistake and there was the apology note in my hand, written by the SI on behalf of her team – with an assurance that something like this would not happen again.
Late night, I posted about my experience on social media and got down to writing this piece.
Silence, I decided, was not an option because an act like this needs accountability that goes beyond an individual – even if sincere – apology. While extrajudicial working styles make for gripping movie scripts and police dramas, there is no place for them in the real world. Police must take institutional responsibility for that.
Delhi Police is India's elite police force, reporting directly to the home ministry. It is supposed to set the standards, uphold the rulebook, and be unimpeachable in its conduct. If these are their methods of apprehending suspects, they have some rethinking to do. They are accountable to people. They must do better.
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