When a case is brought in front of the police, they have a fair amount of discretion in terms of the actions they want to take next. For example, they could dec

When a case is brought in front of the police, they have a fair amount of discretion in terms of the actions they want to take next. For example, they could decide to arrest the suspect and put him/her in "judicial custody" if they determine that s/he would be a threat to the public based on what they have seen in complaint. Now if you're arrested on Friday evening it won't be until Monday that a judge will hear your bail application. So you're guaranteed to spend a few days in jail. And then there are legal loopholes you can exploit that can ensure that the bail application isn't heard on Monday. When such things are effectively done people could spend a week or two or even more in jail. All this is because the police and the judiciary have a fair number of discretionary powers each of which all have perfectly reasonable justifications. I would guess that the person in this case involved got on the wrong side of a important political or bureaucratic entity and they pulled strings to make sure the discretionary powers were used in specific ways after filing a "bogus" complaint. If the police were behaving honestly, they should have told the complainant to bugger off, but because there were important people showing "interest" they didn't. My guess is that this sort of thing is really nothing unique to India. It's just that the people who exploited in such ways in the US (to pick a familiar example) would likely be poor immigrants, young black males etc. who lack the connections required to get their stories heard. Perhaps one important difference is that politicians seem to have a lot of leverage over police authorities in India.