Karaoke complaint

"We were having a karaoke party at a friend’s home at Santa Cruz... when at around 1.15 a.m. two cops with walkie-talkies knocked on the door and barged in, accusing us of playing loud music,” celebrity hair stylist Avan Contractor told Mumbai Mirror (MM) on December 12, 2009. "They told us they would confiscate our music system. They took down all our names — there were 12 of us — and insisted that we accompany them to the police station,” she added.

The women explained to the policemen that it was a harmless party within the privacy of a home, that if anybody in the neighborhood had a problem with the volume they would turn it down. Even after switching off the system, for 30 minutes the cops insisted that the girls should come to the police station so that a complaint could be registered against them. The women refused to go without being accompanied by a female constable as per the law, and one of the two cops allegedly said that they "wanted to party too.”

Avan Contractor: a brush with the cops

Contractor told MM, "Though we knew giving money would be wrong, we were all too scared. The cops were very rude and intimidating. They kept saying that once at the police station they would teach us all a lesson,” but eventually the police left. Contractor told MM she has sent a written complaint to the deputy commissioner of police. "I just can’t understand what’s wrong with having a harmless party at home? If the music is loud cops should warn or maybe even penalize but not harass anyone like this,” Contractor disgustedly told MM.