5 min readJun 25, 2026 12:20 PM IST
First published on: Jun 23, 2026 at 02:53 PM IST
On the day C Joseph Vijay took the oath as Chief Minister, Deepak did not attend the celebration. He opened a website. The 30-something software engineer working for a multinational company in Chennai had spent months listening to a complaint so common in Tamil Nadu that many people had stopped treating it as corruption at all: the extra Rs 10 collected for a bottle of liquor at government-run TASMAC outlets.
“That Rs 10 was one of the issues people spoke about everywhere,” Deepak said. “It was one of the things that created huge anger among ordinary people. I wanted to know how widespread it really was.” The website was simple. People could report TASMAC shops allegedly charging above the maximum retail price. Deepak called it a public-interest experiment.
What happened next surprised him. Within days, nearly 10,000 people had visited the site. Around 300 complaints arrived. Some named specific shops, while others attached photographs. A senior IAS officer called him on the third day. “He appreciated the idea,” Deepak said. “TASMAC officials also came to know about it.”
The complaints kept coming – and many of them had little to do with liquor. That made Deepak think of broadening the ambit. He started another site to examine corruption across different sectors. People wanted to talk about land registrations, revenue offices, electricity connections, village panchayats, police stations, death certificates, government hospitals, delayed files and missing approvals.
“I realised I have discovered something larger than a TASMAC website. So I built another one,” he said. The new platform, called Makkal Saatchi — People’s Witness — went live on May 27. It now lists 75 categories of public services where citizens can anonymously describe experiences of alleged bribery, harassment or corruption.
“This is not affiliated with any government body, political party, NGO or media organisation,” the website declares. “No funding is sought or accepted.” Its language is direct: “Every bribe has a witness”; “No office is too powerful”; “Report the bribe. Expose the pattern.” Deepak describes himself simply as a Vijay supporter. He has a membership number in the ruling Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), but he has no organisational role.
“I don’t know any leaders,” he said. “Some TVK members in my locality once took me to meet an MLA after I launched this site. He was busy. I didn’t even get time to explain the website.”
So far, the platform has received around 400 complaints. Most are anonymous. Around 10 per cent of complainants voluntarily provide contact details. Deepak says many submissions are striking not because of the alleged amounts involved, but because of the helplessness they describe. “Many complaints are crystal clear in their narration. Some are painful. You cannot forget it,” he said. “Some of them are painful to read. Reading them makes your mind heavy.”
Among the categories receiving the highest number of complaints are TASMAC overcharging, land registration services, electricity connections, revenue administration and local bodies.
One recent complaint alleged that a police station in Chennai demanded Rs 50,000 to “settle” a private dispute. The complainant, who followed Deepak on social media, separately alerted him to the submission. Deepak posted the allegation online after removing identifiers. The response was immediate. Many users tagged senior police officials. The next morning, Deepak received a call from a senior cop. After securing assurances that the complainant would not face retaliation, he shared the details with authorities. According to him, action was subsequently taken against officers attached to the station in Chennai city.
In another case from Namakkal district, a complaint alleged that land surveyors were demanding Rs 10,000 from applicants, claiming they needed to recover the cost of newly introduced surveying equipment. The allegation triggered online responses from officials, some of whom denied knowledge of any such practice.
The website records grievances rather than proving them. Yet the complaints paint a familiar picture of everyday interactions with government systems. A cancer patient allegedly asked to pay a bribe to obtain an insurance card in a government hospital; a landowner claiming a large builder encroached on private property; citizens describing demands for money to obtain documents that are supposed to be routine services.
Deepak says he deliberately avoids publishing names of individual officers because he lacks the resources to independently verify every allegation. “I cannot act like an investigating agency,” he said.
Among the categories receiving the highest number of complaints are TASMAC overcharging, land registration services, electricity connections, revenue administration and local bodies. 
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