The Shockingly Surprising Experience At Noida Police Station

Today (20th March 2012) I had to visit a police station in Noida (U.P.). While I have nothing against the police personnel whom I had to interact with, what I found shockingly surprising was how every official work in a Noida police station is conducted in Hindi, with absolutely no option for English (even if a work entails a visitor who is not conversant in Hindi).

Despite being not very fluent in Hindi, I was forced to communicate with the officers in that language, as I was flatly told that I was not permitted to speak in English as "Noida comes in UP". Despite telling the officers that I cannot read Hindi, I was made to read a document written in that language, which I had to read with the help of an officer. Finally I had to write and submit a statement, and the officers told me that they could not permit me to write it in English, as they would then need somebody to translate it into Hindi (are those police personnel even unable to read English?) Ultimately I again had to take the help of a policeman who prepared my statement on the basis of what I said.

Do the Noida police people have any idea how terribly inconvenient the situation is for people with no or little command of Hindi? Even if it is OK to have verbal communication in Hindi, isn't it too much to expect a person from a non-Hindi speaking region to be able to read a document in Hindi, and then prepare his own statement in that language as well?

I just have one dream. One UP police officer needs to visit a Calcutta police station for some reason, and he is forced to read and write documents there in Bengali, while being told that neither English nor Hindi is permitted, as "Calcutta comes in West Bengal".