Commissioner Rakesh Maria ordered the probe after a strong social-media backlash against what many deemed unjustified interference into citizens’ privacy, the Hindu newspaper reports.
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“If two adults are inside a hotel room with their consent, then it is none of our business”, he told a newspaper.
Mumbai police spokesperson DCP Dhananjay Kulkarni stated Malwani police took motion following a number of complaints from the general public and native residents.
In an everyday sense, housing societies already ask for marriage certificates before they will rent a flat to a heterosexual couple.
The Malwani police, several of whose officers were suspended for allowing a spurious liquor racket to flourish in their jurisdiction, which led to the deaths of more than 100 people in the hooch tragedy last month, seem to have declared war on an easy target: sex.
Consenting adults who checked into several hotels in Madh Island and Aksa area were in for a shock when they found policemen knocking on the doors of their rooms and rounding them up on 6 August.
“I admit it was the police’s mistake”.
Parents of some college students who were held were also called to the police station, they added. Malwani police had picked up 40-odd couples from hotels in Madh Island and Aksa, and charged them with “public indecency”. They were fined Rs 1,200 each before being let off after almost five hours.
According to a report revealed in a every day, the episode left some of these “caught” traumatized. It said one 19-year-old was contemplating suicide because her parents had stopped talking to her. Another 21-year-old, who had visited a hotel with her fiance, reportedly said she was slapped by a female constable when she protested against the action.
Another girl, who is arrested said to the media that, “I am not a prostitute”. People were angered over the fact that the police claimed this to be public indecency. “I entered my name in the hotel register with my identity proof and handed over documents when asked”, one of the women told a local daily. What would change if young people feared their parents less than they do the police? These couples were questioned for a long time regarding this and were forced to call their parents and elders.
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Yet again, the Mumbai Police have assumed that their responsibilities include the morality policing of consenting adults – this time in private spaces that they had paid for.
