Many a time, we’ve heard stories of policemen or other authoritative figures overlooking their obligations towards their uniform and taking advantage of it to misbehave with other civilians. Probably for the very reason, sometimes, I get scared when they’re around even when I haven’t done anything wrong instead of feeling the sense of security in their presence. Well, a similar incident took place recently and it’s very shocking and sad to hear about such deceitful Nepali traffic police. I can’t generalize, saying all policemen are the same but we have to make everyone aware of things that happened and make sure they don’t repeat. Here’s an account of the incident from the person who went through it herself.
“On Friday, I had the most annoying experience ever. I don’t think I will be able to ever forget this experience because this has totally changed my perception towards the so called “police” and their misusing of power.
We were standing in a corner waiting for our driver to arrive at Durbar Marg and suddenly a traffic policeman comes up to us randomly and takes a picture. His excuse of taking our picture was that we were blocking the traffic. There were hardly any cars around to call it a traffic and we were not even standing in the middle of the road. Then after that, he started to swear like anything (mind you – I haven’t even heard such swearing in movies) then his accomplice, who is not even a police officer or maybe he was but not wearing any uniform, started to verbally abuse us like anything pointing at me. He kept on going for awhile, yelling all sorts of disgusting name calling, which I don’t want to even mention it. I don’t think I have experienced such offensive behavior in my lifetime!
Unfortunately, we didn’t get his name but since he took our picture, we also took his picture at the end because he continued to yell. YES, we didn’t lay a hand on him because he was wearing the ‘uniform’ but whatever the circumstances, he being drunk or looking for trouble, he didn’t have the right to take our picture. What made it worse is that I had a friend from abroad visiting… This has started to make me wonder, how many people have actually gone through this without any wrongdoing? So, the police have the freedom to abuse any individual just because he is wearing a uniform? I use to feel safe when thy were around but now I think I should be warned by their presence instead. Depressing indeed!”