NEW DELHI (PTI): Someone owes you money, but is not paying. The police may not be able to help. The courts may take oolong: De you have an option?
A muscle man, hired by debt col letting agents, is sent to the house of the defaulter, who is first re- quested to pay the money back, then threatened and given a dead: line. The threats are intensified and the deadline shrined and when everything fails, the money is, at times, beaten out of the individuate, All this for a Price of course.
It is “legality carried out in an illegal way.” says Bharat Singh, who works for a debt collector in south Delhi.
“It is not like what you see in films,” says a trader in a Posh south Delhi locality, but yes, gangsters arc employed to take back debts, a car from which the company may not have got back loan money despite warming’s, or a divorced wife’s alimony. The debt collector takes 15 to 25% and in some cases even 50% of the money recovered. The muscleman is paid quite heavily, sometimes even 50% of the debt collector’s share. “We are helping out a desperate: person,” says Bharat Singh, justifying this defiance of law.
Article extracted from this publication >> August 19, 1994
