BENGALURU — For K. Sivakumar, a retired finance executive who once served as Chief Financial Officer of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), the death of his 34-year-old daughter, Akshaya, was unimaginable grief. A graduate of IIT Madras and IIM Ahmedabad, she had built a career that spanned over a decade, including eight years at Goldman Sachs.
On September 18, she died of a sudden brain haemorrhage. But in the days that followed, Sivakumar found himself navigating an entirely different kind of horror — one that unfolded not in hospital corridors but in the hands of public servants.
In a now-deleted LinkedIn post, Sivakumar recounted how he was allegedly extorted at nearly every step of the funeral process: from ambulance drivers and police officers to mortuary attendants and civic clerks at the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP). “It felt like I was paying a tax on my own daughter’s death,” he wrote.
Bribes for Every Breath of Bureaucracy
According to Sivakumar, the chain of demands began with a request for ₹5,000 from an ambulance driver to transport his daughter’s body between hospitals. At the Belandur police station, where he went to file an FIR and obtain post-mortem documents, he said he was met with indifference and cruelty.
“The inspector was so rude — no empathy for a father who lost his only child,” he recalled. The officer, he alleged, openly demanded cash in the station, a place with no CCTV cameras. Later, payments were sought again at the crematorium for receipts and, finally, at the BBMP office for the death certificate.
Even after repeated visits, he claimed, the certificate was issued only after he paid more than the official fee. “I could afford to pay,” he wrote bitterly, “but what will a poor person do? Does the police have family or feelings to demand a bribe when someone is already in trauma?”
Public Outcry and the Mirror of a Society
The LinkedIn post — widely circulated before being deleted — unleashed a wave of outrage across social media. Thousands of users condemned the incident as emblematic of the deep moral rot within public institutions.
“Very unfortunate that even police and public officers are so insensitive. They have no place in human society,” one user wrote. Another lamented, “I thought this kind of bribery no longer happens in India. Are we going backwards?”
Others saw in Sivakumar’s story a deeper cultural malaise — a society where money has replaced humanity as a measure of worth. “Even within families,” one commenter observed, “respect now comes from how much you earn. We are sinking as a society.”
Another voice struck a sharper tone: “This is not just corruption — it’s cruelty. When death itself becomes a marketplace, what remains sacred?”
The Official Response and Lingering Questions
As outrage grew, civic leaders and political figures responded. Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Girish Bharadwaj stated on X that Bengaluru Police Commissioner Seemant Kumar Singh had personally spoken to Sivakumar and assured him that “appropriate action” would be taken.
Yet for many, the assurances came too late to repair the damage. The episode, observers said, has revealed not just individual corruption but a pattern of systemic neglect — an absence of empathy woven into daily governance.
Sivakumar, who joined BPCL in 1987 and spent decades managing finances, wrote in quiet despair that he had “never felt poorer in spirit” than in those few days.
The post has since vanished, but its echo endures. In the grief of one father, India saw the reflection of a decaying civic conscience — one in which humanity itself is now held hostage to petty extortion.
