While this incident has taken place in indore, similar incidents are taking place elsewhere in India so renting property or even living in a relatives house, is very risky for those from powerless communities, since all their goods are not accessible. This is similar to what raw/cbi employees are doing when they block the sales of domains of a private citizen
Posted on reddit by Independent-Author-9
Being blackmailed by extremely powerful people & with the aid of high-ranking gazetted officers. What to do
‘m sorry for the long text, it’s just so much has happened. This has happened in Indore.
It started last year. We lived in a 3 storey building. On the ground floor are two shops, one of which we rented and on the 1st floor (Also rented) is where we lived. 2nd floor had a girls hostel run by the same landlord.
Last year my dad had a heated argument with the landlord over the electricity bill because it was combined and so we were forced to pay for his girls hostel electricity usage too. Anyway it got heated and the landlord said I want you to evict both the house and the shop immediately on the spot. A few hours later cops show up to our house, and when we go to the police station there’s the landlord with four girls and the cops said the girls have accused us of harassing them, even though we don’t even know any of them. But the cops just told my dad to empty our house and shop immediately. When my dad asked for a written copy of the complaint they refused.
Next day we took our essentials and went to stay at a relative’s place for a few days so that they can’t make any further allegations against us. Some time later landlord broke the lock on the door and captured all our household items and refused to return anything. When my dad went to the police they just flat out refused to file a complaint. He circled the police station for days, went to jan sunwai at the collector office, filed complaint on CM helpline etc but nothing, police didn’t file an FIR.
Now they started pressuring to evict the shop immediately also. It’s one thing to leave your house, but you can’t just evict a shop as it takes years to build up a business (All our rent was paid, and the rent agreement also had several months left). So my dad told the landlord we will only evict the shop at the expiry of the rent agreement. Next day we came to the shop to find all our boards/banners/outside camera etc destroyed and all cables like internet camera etc that went into the shop are cut.
Again we went to the police, again police didn’t do anything. Dad filed an application at SP Office, various high officials etc but nothing. Instead we got called to the police station again and found out that the landlord is filing a complaint against us for beating them up in front of our shop. We begged the TI to do an investigation and luckily he agreed. A team went to ask nearby shopkeepers etc and they all said that there was no violence, so the TI refused to file the FIR.
A few days later we find out that the landlord has taken one girl to the police station and filed a section 354 complaint against both me and my father. Then again they came to us and told if we evict the shop immediately they will take back the case otherwise we will go to jail (I have a recording of this also).It should also be mentioned that the fake FIR they had filed had nothing that warranted Section 354. It just said that I held that girls hand and then ran away when she screamed (False, of course, i had no idea who this person even was). Since then we’ve heard that a high ranking officer ordered to put section 354 on the case. They even got this news published in every major newspaper to defame us.
Then my father got a call from the Tehsildar. He told my dad to evict the shop by the evening or he will take action against us (I also have the call recording of this). Since this was getting hot we decided not to open the shop for a few days and brought some equipment home so my dad can do some of the work from home. After this we got a call from Indore’s ADM’s office, telling us to hand over the key of the shop to the landlord. My dad said he will loop his lawyer into the call and the person on the other side said (And I also have recording of this) that if we hire a lawyer we will be in big trouble and to just give the key.
Then I traced the girl that had filed the section 354 FIR against us and we went to meet her father. I recorded the entire conversation, during which he explicitly says that the girl told him that the landlord took her to the police station to file a fake complaint.
Then the landlord broke the lock on our shop and again captured everything inside. Again my dad circled police stations, SP office, Jan Sunwai etc but the cops didn’t file a complaint or investigate anything.
So now the landlord has both our house and our shop under his possession along with almost all our belongings. On top of that there’s still the section 354 FIR. Now some random people came to our home and said they were sent by the girl’s father to negotiate. They said he wants 10 lakhs to take back the case. We don’t have that much money. And if it goes to court, the girl will have to testify that it’s true (Otherwise she’d be screwed for filing a false case), and in India the girl’s testimony holds more weight than the guy’s.
So now we’re screwed. We’ve tried filing complaints on CM Helpline, Jan sunvai etc etc but nobody cares. My dad’s even heard that the police was specifically told not to take any cases against the landlord by a high ranking official, but we don’t know who.