The woman has said her minor daughter was kidnapped by a relative last month.
A differently abled woman in Uttar Pradesh's Kanpur district has alleged that she paid between Rs 10,000 and Rs 15,000 to local policemen to fill diesel in their vehicles so that they would agree to search for her minor daughter who, she says, was kidnapped last month by a relative.
The woman in crutches, who identified herself as only Gudiya, approached the Kanpur police chief on Monday with her complaint against the allegedly errant officials. Speaking to local media outlets outside the commissioner's office, Ms Gudiya, a widow with some meagre land holdings, said she had filed a case about her missing daughter last month. The police, however, were not helping her, she alleged.
"The cops tell me 'we are looking'. Sometimes they shoo me away, cast aspersions on my daughter's character saying she must be at fault. The police say 'fill diesel in our vehicles and we will go looking for your daughter'," she said.
"Sometimes they say 'chal yahan se' ("Get lost"). I have not bribed the police, I won't lie. But yes, I have filled diesel in their vehicles. I have paid for 3-4 trips. There are two personnel at the concerned police chowki, one of them is helping me the other is not," Gudiya said.
She said she had borrowed from relatives to arrange the money for the diesel. "I told the police chief I have arranged diesel worth Rs 10,000-15,000. How can I go on like this?" she told the media.
After video clips of Gudiya describing her ordeal went viral, the Kanpur police tweeted saying the police post in-charge under whose jurisdiction the case of Ms Gudiya's missing daughter falls was on Monday removed from duty and was suspended from service today. A departmental enquiry into the matter, too, has been ordered.
The police handle tweeted a video of the elderly woman being driven in a police vehicle from the Commissioner's office to the concerned police station. Four teams have been formed to look for her daughter, the tweet said.
"We have asked the police station in-charge to immediately act on the case. All her allegations will be looked into and if anyone is found guilty, we will take action," Brajesh Kumar Shrivastava, a senior police official in Kanpur, told media persons.