Faced a bribe demand? Indian student creates website ‘bribe.fyi’ where you can report it anonymously

Two Indian students have launched Bribes.fyi, a website that allows people to report incidents involving bribery. The platform calls itself a “free, crowdsourced platform” where citizens can share instances in which they were asked to pay a bribe at government offices, including cases where they refused to pay.

The website compiles the submissions and categorises them by department, city and state, with the aim of giving the public an overview of reported patterns of corruption.

The platform was created by Aryan Nishad, a BTech student at Maharaja Agrasen Institute Of Technology.

According to the domain information associated with the website, bribes.fyi is registered with NameCheap Inc. The website was launched on July 2.

Based on the website’s design and appearance, it appears Nishad may have used AI-assisted “vibe coding” to build the platform.

How the bribe registry works

Reports submitted by users are organised on the website into three categories — reports, departments and cities. The platform also enables users to compare reported bribe demands across different government departments.

The departments currently listed include the Police, RTO, Revenue/Land Records, Passport Office, Municipal Corporation, GST Office, Electricity Board, Income Tax, and Food and Drug Administration.

As of August 17, the website showed 646 reported bribes across 258 cities. It also said that 37% of people who reported being asked for a bribe refused to pay but still managed to get their work done.

Police tops list of reported bribes

The Police Department accounts for the highest number of reports on the platform, with 349 cases. The RTO follows with 100 reports, while Revenue/Land Records has 69.

The Passport Office has 43 reported cases, followed by Municipal Corporations with 30.

Karnataka records highest number of reports

Among the states listed on the website, Karnataka has the highest number of reported bribe cases, at 138. Maharashtra follows with 91 reports and Uttar Pradesh with 75.

Delhi has recorded 47 reports, while Telangana and Haryana have 37 and 35, respectively. West Bengal has 34 reports, followed by Tamil Nadu with 27.

Bihar has 29, and Andhra Pradesh 27.

When it comes to the average reported bribe amount, Jammu & Kashmir ranks first at ₹19,067, based on six reports.

Chhattisgarh comes next, with an average of ₹13,000 from two reports. Maharashtra ranks third, with an average reported bribe of ₹10,238 across 83 reports.

Assam has 100% refusal rate

The website’s data shows that Assam has the highest refusal rate, at 100%. However, this figure is based on only one report, and no average bribe amount has been listed for the state.

Goa and Uttarakhand follow with refusal rates of 33% each, based on three reports apiece. Andhra Pradesh has a 23% refusal rate across 26 reports, while Rajasthan’s rate stands at 18% across 17 reports.

The figures above are based on data available on the website as of August 17.

Reddit users welcome the initiative

The website has also drawn attention on Reddit, with several users welcoming the idea.

“This is going to be the most consequential platform ever built,” one user wrote. “Dar ka mahaul bi-directional hona chaiye.”

Another user called the initiative “excellent”, while pointing out that some people continue to justify bribery by arguing that it is simply how the system works.

Questions raised over verification

Some users, however, questioned how the platform verifies the reports.

On Hacker News, one user wrote, “Not sure what ‘verified’ means because the only verification they did was require a checkbox that ‘I confirm this is a genuine experience.’”

The data and figures mentioned above are based on information available on the website. LiveMint could not independently verify the figures.