New Delhi (PTI): One third of people living below poverty line in India paid bribes to access healthcare, education and water among other basic facilities, says a new study which also dubs the police force as the most corrupt among the services surveyed.

The joint study by Transparency International India and non-profit research organisation Centre for Media Studies (CMS) in 2007 found that one-third of BPL households paid Rs 9,000 million as bribes in the year for availing one or more of the 11 public services covered in the survey.

The services include Public Distribution System (PDS), Hospital Service, Senior Secondary School Education, electricity and water supply. Need-based services included National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, land records and registration, forest, housing, banking and police service.

The 'TII-CMS India Corruption Study 2007' revealed that police tops the chart, as far as corruption in 11 selected public services is concerned.

Of the 5.6 million BPL households that interacted with the police last year, a whopping 2.5 million paid Rs 2,150 million as bribe for some work or the other and most of them went to the police station for simple registration of a complaint, it said.

Land records and registration services comes second in terms of monetary contribution as nearly 3.5 million BPL households paid Rs 1,224 million as bribe.

A total of 22,728 BPL households were surveyed across the states throughout the country adopting the perception, experience and estimation (PEE) model.