It's a fine morning and Kallu dhobi is taking laundry to the Yamuna River. Pardon me; the place is a small village in Uttar Pradesh. It can be any village as this can happen in any part of the state. He gets the bundle off his donkey and is settling down in is usual spot but before he could start washing his clothes, something else has washed ashore. He spots a piece of cloth and curiously he grabs it. He gets the shock of his lifetime when he sees that the cloth is actually a shirt and is still worn by its owner. It is a dead body that has been dumped in the river. Maybe by someone who had kidnapped him for ransom, maybe by a business associate or the jealous husband of a woman he was dating or maybe the poor guy just killed himself.

Startled by the sight of a dead man staring at his face, Kallu falls in river. He gets up and started running as fast as he could, with his donkey running after him and his bundle of clothes lying by the river. He goes straight to the police station and stops only at the desk of Sub inspector Yadav. “Saab, maine nadi mein ek laash dekhi hai”. Yadav looks at him and his wet clothes and probes further.

“When did you see it?”

“Sir I am coming straight from there”

“Do you know who it is?”

“No sir.”

“Did you leave it there or you pulled it out of the river?”

“Sir, I was too scared to do anything, it still is at the shore with my clothes”

“Mishra, Shukla, let's go" Sub Inspector calls two constables and they drive to the spot where the dead body was recovered.”

The police tried to find out who the dead man is “Shukla, check his pockets”

“Sir there is nothing in the pockets, his purse is also missing, and apart from that there is nothing else on the body, no ring, no other accessory”

At the spot they inspected the body and after they inspected in thoroughly, the body is removed from the spot where it was found. “OK Kallu, you can get on with your work, we will call you to the kotwali if required” and the cops left.

At the police station the next thing is to try finding out who the dead person is. SP of Police Sharma calls Yadav to check the progress on the case "Have you found out who he is”

“No sir, we have checked all the reports of the missing persons and he doesn't match any of them...may be he is not from UP"

“Yeah, that is a big problem. People from other places are also can be found here. Ask Gupta in the computers section to check for missing people in Delhi, Haryana and MP.”

“Sir that has already been tried.”

“And?”

“Sir we are not connected to the databases of those states”

“What a shame, we are in a country with maximum programmers and still we don't have a network connecting the police of all states in this country, now if someone from Bihar is murdered hers, how are we going to find who he is.” Yadav keeps quite

“All right, put an ad in the paper, we need to do something before the body rots”

Three days later

Sharma: “Yadav, has someone come to claim the body.”

Yadav: “No sir.”

“But you did place an ad in the paper, right?”

“Right sir, but no one came.”

“Bloody hell, now another problem, we will have to perform the last rites of this body"

“Yes sir, we are collecting funds for it.”

“Collecting funds?”

“Yes sir. Can't cremate this body in the two bucks we get for doing this. I mean sir what do you get for two bucks, a box of matches, us par to iski chita nahin jala sakte na...Sir can't we speak to the government and ask them to increase the 2 buck to 1500 bucks?”

“Yadav, I have tried that and I was told that there will be an inquiry and if they find that the money provided is not enough, they will increase it”

“Sir isme dekhna kya hai, anyone can tell you that two rupees are not enough”

“Yeah...you are right, sale angrezon ke zamane ka rate abhi tak change nahinh huha hai. Two bucks fixed by the brits may have been fine in 1906 but in 2006...”

“Sir, we have to go out and collect chanda for such activities or have to pay from our own pockets...can't the department have a fund that can be utilised for these kind of things.”

As Yadav was saying this, Constable Mishra walked into the room to tell Yadav that they have managed to collect 1200 rupees and will need three hundred more. Sharma looked at him from head to toe and was disgusted with what he saw; Mishra was wearing rubber chappals, a grey shirt. He had the uniform khaki trousers but they were a little too big and constantly slipping down in the absence of the belt to keep it in place.

“Look at this joker Yadav, this is what the police is, we don't have the funds to give him uniform and you are talking about funds for cremations. Here, take these 300 bucks now you have 1500 bucks now go and cremate the body”

Yadav and Mishra left but what Yadav said kept Sharma thinking, that evening, he went to the commissioner of the police with his plan.

“Good evening, sir”

“Good evening Sharma, you were saying you wanted to talk about collecting some funds for the police?”

“Yes sir, I have a plan.”

“OK, let's see it.”

“There are 20 cops in our police station.
Every cop collects bribe of 200-buck everyday.  The project goes on for one month.  At the end of one month the total money collected is 6000 per cop and a total of 1,20,000 for 20 cops.
The fund collected for each cop's uniform will be Rs.6000 and this should be enough to buy four shirts and trousers, two pairs of boots and two sweaters.”

I have to confess, for the first time I felt sorry for the cops because so far I used to feel that they are one giving everyone else a hard time but I see sometimes they are at the receiving end too. So remember the next time a cops asks for a bribe, it may go in the fund to buy his uniform.

This story is inspired by two programs I saw on TV. The fact that the police get two bucks for the cremation of a body came from Aaj tak and the police not getting uniform from Star.