BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION.
No matter how powerful and reckless of consequences a smuggler may be,
there is, nevertheless, a lurking respect in his bosom for the myrmidons
of the Law. It is to his interest to have the authorities on his side,
and, as he cannot have them on other terms, he must pay them handsomely.
An excise or police officer, especially if he be of the lower ranks, can
make it uncommonly uncomfortable for a smuggler; and it may be taken
for granted that a smuggler is not completely satisfied until he has a
large proportion of the preventive staff in his pay. To some, however,
he will pay nothing because he has nothing to fear from incapables; some
who occasionally come in his way he will tip with the economy of the
uncle who tips his nephew; but to the able ones, the ones that can make
it very warm for him, he will pay handsome monthly salaries, and he will
look upon the outlay as money well invested. It is in this way that the
smuggler keeps his traffic going; it is thus that he makes it possible to
smuggle with profit.
Now, the preventive can only prevent by seizing contraband articles; so
that it stands to reason that its efficiency, and the ability of the
individuals who compose it, must be judged largely by results; by the
number of arrests made, and the quantity of contraband seized. An able
officer who makes no hauls may be not unjustly put down as a bribe-taker,
and a chief who knows that there is lots of contraband to be seized for
the trying, will come down heavily on such a subordinate.
What does the smuggler do when the well-paid watchdog of the Law comes
to him and tells him that he will be obliged to seize some, if not all,
of the smuggler’s next consignment of opium, because the game is, to all
intents and purposes, up? Does he wring his hands and roundly curse his
ill luck? No; he merely smiles and advises the watchdog to stand at the
corner of such-and-such a street, near so-and-so’s shop between certain
hours next morning, and search the man who passes him with a spotted
bandanna round his neck, and a bundle under his right arm. The watchdog
acts on the advice, searches the man with the spotted bandanna, finds two
cakes of opium, and walks the culprit off to the police station. For this
he is commended and paid a reward; the smuggler gets off with the loss
of two cakes of opium instead of the hundred he stood to lose; and the
man with the spotted bandanna who is ultimately sent to prison for six
months, merely fulfils the duty for which he is paid a regular monthly
salary.
The foregoing is an example of the methods of smugglers, and of the
cupidity of some of the staff employed by Government to guard its
revenues. But it is only one. It would weary the reader to be told of
the scores of other means employed. The smuggler, knowing that a certain
officer is financially embarrassed, will approach him with the offer of
a loan, and accept a note of hand for the accommodation. That note of
hand releases the smuggler from all further obligation to pay the officer
in question. He is well aware that certain dismissal of the latter must
result if he shows the scrap of paper in the proper quarter. He has the
unfortunate man completely in his hands. But it is obvious that there can
be little to fear from a man who provides such damning evidence against
himself.
People might well ask how it is that so much corruption can go on and
yet no one be caught and punished. Now, it is a well-known principle
of evidence that one man’s word is as good as another’s, and in law,
no matter how convincing the truth of a man’s story might be, it
must usually be corroborated before a magistrate will convict. The
giving and receiving of bribes are, by their very nature, secret
transactions—transactions to which there are no independent witnesses,
so that it is very rarely that the charge can be brought home; and it is
usually only those cases in which a confirmed bribe-taker has been lured
into a trap, skilfully laid with the aid of marked notes or coins, which
have a satisfactory conclusion. It must, moreover, be borne in mind that
the giver or offerer of a bribe is just as much liable in law as the
receiver or solicitor of it; so that it is seldom that a complaint to a
magistrate is made.
The two anecdotes I give here will afford the reader food for thought:
X was a responsible officer. He had the control of a district, and was
widely respected. One afternoon, when at office, he had occasion to
leave his room, and on his return to it, found ten one-hundred rupee
notes under a paperweight on his table. He well knew who had placed them
there. He took three of these notes to his superior officer, and with
much apparent indignation, handed them to him, and asked that the sum
be credited to Government. The guileless superior, ever after thought
highly of X’s honesty, and reported on him in flattering terms. X became
a richer man by seven hundred rupees!
Now for the second story:
Y was one night visited by a smuggler who produced a bag containing five
hundred rupees, and offered the money as a bribe. Y stormed at him, and
calling in his men, had the smuggler arrested, and sent up for trial on a
charge of offering a bribe. The money was produced and counted in court.
“How many rupees are there there?” enquired the smuggler. “Five hundred
rupees,” replied the magistrate. “Oh!” said the rascal, “The bag had a
thousand rupees in it when I gave it to the sahib!” And Y was generally
regarded as a taker of bribes for the rest of his official life. So does
fate sometimes serve the virtuous!
I have given the seamy side of things here. There are, however, many
excellent and deserving men in preventive departments—men who would
rather stay poor than sell their honour.