Bribezillas

SREERUPA CHOWDHURY ALWAYS wanted to be Atticus Finch from To Kill A Mockingbird—taking up cases for those who lacked the ability and knowhow. Her crusade began when she was preparing to attend an anti-corruption conference in Brazil in 2012 and the police officers who came for the verification process for her passport harassed her for a bribe. “If it can happen to me, what about the others, who are ignorant of their basic rights?” she thought. Similarly, Monalisa’s ordeal of constantly having to cough up bribes to traffic cops set her ideals in motion. Taking a cue from the online platform ipaythebribe.com, meant primarily for reporting bribes, the lawyer duo decided to help victims by offering them legal aid. Sreerupa and Monalisa partnered with the website to reach out to victims who were looking for legal help or assistance in taking incidents up at an institutional level. And so, in April 2015, Bribe Hackers was born. The only rule their platform has imposed on users is that they must identify themselves—anonymous complaints are not encouraged. “If there is an enquiry, the person will have to depose. We tell our users that we are there to draft the complaint and handhold them through the process, assuring them of whistleblower protection,” says Sreerupa. So far, they have drafted 20 complaints to the Lok Ayukta and 15 against PSUs to the Vigilance Commission. Their success has generated not just results in terms of an idealistic victory, but their user base also continues to expand. Though Sreerupa invested $30,000 earned as a grant from the World Justice Project in Washington towards Bribe Hackers, sustainability is a problem. “Since people have already had to cough up bribes for getting things done, obviously they wouldn’t like to shell out extra for redressal. The biggest challenge is sustainability. There has to be an ecosystem to support it. Institutional help and support from the government would be necessary for running it,” she says