- Bribe Fighter
- 13 years ago
- 2445 views
Heartless customs officials
This happened about 5 years back. i landed at mumbai airport, after completing the immigration formalities, i collected my baggage and was in a que for scanning of my luggage for customs clearance. ahead of me was a middle aged lady, seemed like a house maid or a low category worker. she had about 4 packages incl 2 medium sized suitcases and two med sized cartons. her luggage was put up for screening and was told to open the same for checking. after opening what i observed was that the customs official was literally counting even undergarments from the bags. finally declared that things were beyond limit for a person to carry and she will have to pay customs duty. to avoid that he asked her to pay 10k at this time getting frustrated, lady started crying. i took initiative to talk to the officer by putting him one question whether he did this exercise at his home also by counting all these things belonging to his mother or sister. from the profile it was clear that this lady had left the job and she told me that many of the items in the luggage were given to her by the employer as a good gesture of her work. and our so called great officers wanted a share of that. on my interference as above, officer hushed up the matter and let her go. Just imagining the plight of these poor unlucky creatures who are not able to defend themselves, and these jackals feast on them. it is time to put up and end to this practice