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Longest Indian Waits

Ketan Tanna on how we are a nation that has got used to standing in eternal queues Apart from the dark blue passport, the endorsement of Indian citizenship comes from the inescapable anthem — You Are In Queue.

Indians are so many and human activities so few that most ventures in this country consign you to the dreaded waiting line. This is the story of some poignant Indian waits. School Admission In urban India, the birth of a child drives parents to the best schools to register their ward for admissions that are four to five years away. Meera Isaacs, Principal of Mumbai’s The Cathedral & John Connon School, says, “Yes, we are taking applications from the parents of a year-old child so that he or she can join the kindergarten when the child is five years old. We stop taking applications when the number of registrations reaches 500. Unlike other schools, we do not want parents to line up overnight outside schools or stand in a long queue.”

In Ahmedabad, Manish Mehta has been waiting for two years to get his son admitted into the Delhi Public School (DPS). The boy is now in the eighth standard in a local school and he has been looking forward to a better school since he passed the sixth. He has been taking the entrance tests and interviews for DPS but has been unlucky. The school turns away at least five students a day at the peak of the admissions season.

Club Membership

Even if one is willing to pay huge amounts for the membership of an elite club, the waiting period runs into several years. That is if there is a benevolent waiting period in the first place. Bombay Gymkhana, for instance, has stopped accepting applications for the life, permanent and ordinary memberships. Corporate memberships are open though. A manager at the Gymkhana, who did not want to be identified, said that life membership was last opened in 1998 and closed within a couple of months. According to him, ordinary memberships had opened in 1979-80 and every time memberships open, there are thousands who want to get in. The Delhi Gymkhana has a waiting list that runs into several years while getting a membership in the India Habitat Centre too can take more than a decade. The Karnavati Club in Ahmedabad started with a membership fee of Rs 5,000 for ordinary members which then went up to a lakh about five years ago. Now the figure is Rs 7 lakh but there are so many on the waiting list that the club has stopped taking in new members.

Justice, of course

 As of February 2006, 33,635 cases were pending in the Supreme Court, 3.34 lakh cases in high courts, and 2.5 crore cases in subordinate courts. The Bombay bomb blasts trial that went on for 14 years is among the faster cases. It is not uncommon for justice in this land to take decades. Thousands of farmers were forced to give up their land in Akola, Vidarbha, so that the government could establish the Panjabrao Deshmukh Krishi Vidyapeeth in 1969-70. In return, the government had promised a government job to a member of every family whose land had been acquired. Some 38 years later, the farmers are still fighting for what was promised to them. Trademark People who have applied for the grant of trademarks over a decade ago are still in wait. A lawyer who did not want to named said that one of the trademarks he applied for took 18 years to come, and another took 11. In 2004, he says, there were around 2,50,000 pending trademark applications. On an average it takes anywhere between 18 to 36 months for a trademark to be granted. The average for some categories of trademark is close to four years.

Salvation

Even if one were to get fed up of the materialistic world and hope to seek salvation, there is a waiting period. At the Tirupathi temple, between mid-April and mid-May this year, the temple saw 22 lakh pilgrims, a 30% increase over the same period last year. On some days, over 80,000 have thronged the temple. As a consequence, the waiting period for an economical Rs 50 darshan of Lord Venkateswara stretches to close to three days. If you decide today to do the Rs 50,000 Udayastamana pooja at the Guruvayurappan temple in Kerala, you will be able to do it only after 2050. “We are not accepting any new applications. The new managing committee will take a decision about the next round of applications,” says a temple official. A few years ago, when the then chief minister of Tamil Nadu, Jayalalitha, wanted to give a baby elephant as an offering to the temple following an election victory, she was told that she would have to wait for 38 years.

Art Galleries

If you apply today, the earliest you can hold an exhibition at the Jehangir Art Gallery is in 2012. The gallery’s secretary, Mrs K G Menon says that it can play host to only four artists in a week. “Every year, we get 1000 applications and I can accommodate only 250.” The gallery has acquired two new places on the first floor and the waiting list is expected to come down. The mushrooming of private galleries has helped ease the pressure on Jehangir but even private galleries these days are beginning to have a long waiting period. TNN (With inputs from Vasundhara Vyas in Ahmedabad and Abhinav Bindra from New Delhi)

Surviving Parents Singles who love their parents too much to abandon them suffer the quirks of the aged and sacrifice the freedom of adulthood, say Ketan Tanna and Meena Iyer  

A common perception is that singles enjoy considerable freedom. However, the truth is that many of them are forced by an Indian mindset to live with their parents, and as a consequence suffer the tantrums of the old. Caught between love for their parents and the madness of living with them, they go through a hellish domestic life. Every day, before the break of dawn, Meena Krishnan feels the gentle nudge of her mother’s elbow. “Wake up, it’s early morning,” her 76-year-old widowed mother Mangalam cheerfully announces. It’s another matter that Meena, an unmarried 47-year-old, had a late night and could do with some more sleep. But she gets up groggily and for the next few hours listens as her mother talks incessantly about this and that.

“All I want at that point is some peace and quiet. But I give in because she has nobody else to talk to,” says Meena. There are times when Meena snaps at her mother only to regret it for the full day. “She loves ice-cream and I assuage my guilt by taking home her favourite flavour.”

Sanjeev, a 35-year-old unmarried chartered accountant who does not want to reveal his full name, says that he moved in with his parents due to ill health. He is severely diabetic and has very high blood pressure. For some reason, his parents are very suspicious of him. They have locked all the cupboards except one and have refused to give him the keys. And, they do not believe that he is truthful about how much he earns. They accuse him of not giving them his full salary. They suspect that he is spending all his money on ayyashi (debauchery).

When they asked him for his passbook, he told them that the concept was outdated. “Wait for the quarterly bank statement,” he said, but that only deepened their suspicion. Obviously, not all parents exhibit abnormal behaviour.

An overwhelming majority are regular people, going through their twilight years watching their diet, recounting memories and basking in the gratitude of their wards whom they had given that invaluable gift called a normal childhood.

But even here, there is an inevitable clash of cultures. They do not tolerate the late nights of their adult children. They do not understand why their children need something called freedom. Single girls suffer the most.

A talented actress who lives with her mother often has to listen to uncomplimentary remarks about her late nights, even though she is just returning from a night shift. Thirty-one-year-old Sakshi, who is a director of a media-house, has an understanding mother, but there are rules at home. “I cannot stay out late without informing her, or bring home men in the middle of the night. Even those men who do come home to fetch me for an evening out aren’t allowed beyond the drawing room,” she says. Sakshi feels an acute lack of privacy in her own home. She cannot even walk around her home, mulling over her thoughts. “That’s not possible because my mom craves my indulgence. If I snap back, she reminds me that she is not a paying guest in the house. That’s how bad it gets.”

Single men who live with their parents have unique problems. A journalist who comes from an affluent business household says that unpleasant situations develop over finances. He is a salaried person in a creative field and his earnings do not measure up to the wealth of his siblings.

“There are times when one is made to feel bad about how your salary is less than the phone bill of the family.” But usually, single men face problems that are similar to what single women face. Thirty-year-old Mahesh (surname withheld on request) who is a media professional, says, “Earlier, when I had invited some girlfriends over and brought them to my room, I was told to leave the door open. It was so awkward. Also, my mom would come in on some pretext or another and try to make small talk. I have stopped calling friends over.”

Ashok Shah, in his late 30s, says that boy’s nights out are out of the question. And a conservative dress code has to be followed. Singles who live with their parents have to sacrifice the little joys of life for the grander purpose of being there for their elders.

Not all singles complain though. Film publicist Parull Gossain wouldn’t trade living with her mother for anything. “My friends tease me about it,” she says happily.

Publication:Times Of India Mumbai; Date:Mar 25, 2008; Section:Times City; Page Number:2

Techie trauma: Cops blame telecom co

Ketan Tanna I TNN Mumbai:

The Pune cyber police have squarely blamed Bharti Airtel for the ordeal undergone by K Lakshmana Kailash, the Bangalore HCL employee who was arrested in September 2007 for allegedly defaming Shivaji on a website. Kailash, who spent 50 days in jail, was arrested on the basis of a wrong computer address provided by Bharti.

Replying to Kailash’s legal notice sent in January 2008, Netaji Shinde, assistant commissioner of police, economic & cyber, crime branch, Pune, not only asserted that Bharti Airtel was at fault but said the telecom operator had slipped up and provided a wrong computer address in another case as well. However, Bharti’s advocates Holla & Holla, in an interim reply to the same notice, stated that their clients “deny there has been any negligence or other tortious (sic) acts on their behalf resulting in any actionable claim’’.

They added that a detailed reply would follow. Shinde, in his five-page reply, says that on August 8, 2007, Bharti Airtel, Bangalore, furnished Lakshamana’s address through an email. “As per the information given by Bharti Airtel regarding the physical address of creation of Orkut profile (defaming Shivaji) on IP address 59.144.51.125, Laxman Kailas (sic) K was arrested on September 1, 2007, at 2 pm,’’ says the reply.

The police had first sought the information regarding the moderator of the Orkut group on August 3, 2007 from internet giant Google. The latter informed them that the group was created by IP address 59.144.51.125 on October 29, 2006, at 01.11.57 pm GMT. The email id used to create this Orkut group was kiranreddy-gv@yahoo.co.in, says Shinde (a valid email address is required to create an Orkut group). It was only on October 1, 2007, that the Pune cyber police were able to access the Yahoo email inbox and emails sent from kiranreddy-gv@yahoo.co.in. The trail lead to Kirankumar V Reddy who worked with Convergys Company, Bangalore.

Reddy allegedly confessed that he was the one who had created the Orkut community which called Shivaji various names. “Since there should not be two addresses of creation of Orkut profile of IP address 59.144.51.125, I personally visited Bharti Airtel in Pune and asked them information on the IP,’’ says Shinde.

“It was revealed during the investigation that the information on the physical address of this IP furnished by Bharti Airtel, Bangalore, was wrong and the information of the same IP address later furnished by Bharti on October 11, 2007 (41 days after Lakshmana had been jailed) is correct,’’ says Shinde in his reply.

Shinde also says that Bharti gave a wrong IP address in another case. On investigation of another offence being investigated by Hinjewadi Police Station, Pune), the Pune cyber cell found that Bharti had provided them with an incorrect physical address for IP 122.167.2.155. “Therefore, we once again asked them to give details of the IP address and Bharti Airtel gave the correct address,’’ says Shinde.

Reacting to the fairly serious charges levelled by the Pune cyber police, an Airtel spokesperson said, “As one of the leading telecom operators in the world, we deploy some of the state-of-art technologies, systems and processes that are benchmarked against the best global standards. We are looking into this matter and will take necessary steps. With regards to Lakshmana, we are in touch with him. Beyond this, we are unable to comment as the matter is sub-judice.’’

Lakshmana, on his part, is angry and disturbed, especially at the terse one-page Bharti reply, denying culpability. “Bharti’s reply does not justify how it is not responsible for the charges against it,’’ he says. “It contains no evidence or points to support its denial of charges. The police, on the other hand, have substantiated the denial of charges against them with clear evidence. But their reply holds strong and clear proof that Bharti Airtel is responsible for my damages.’’

ketan.tanna@timesgroup.com

SHOWING THE WAY The Most Useful Litigations This is how unknown people change your life for the better Ketan Tanna and Sharmila Ganesan look at some important PILs that are pending and a few ridiculous ones

It is not clear which was India’s first ever Pub lic Interest Litigation (PIL). Some say it was the Hussainara Khatoon vs State of Bihar case of 1979. It dealt with the miserable conditions of pris ons and undertrials. Others say that PILs were born in 1982 after the Supreme Court, while hear ing the S P Gupta vs Union of India case, announced that anyone acting in the interest of the public may petition the court on behalf of the disadvantaged .

The history of PILs might be ambiguous but it is irrelevant to the hundreds of social crusaders who throng the courts every now and then seeking so lutions to the various problems that affect the com mon man. It is natural that some people will waste the time of the courts with frivolous cases, like charging actresses and models with obscenity. Here we present some of the most thought pro voking and useful PILs that are pending in our courts. And, some of the most useless ones too.

A pre-marital ritual

It makes sense for grooms and brides, especially in the arranged marriage system, to undergo an HIV test. Thousands of people, women particularly have become victims of AIDS because their spous es chose not to confess that they had the disease But it is not practical in India for an HIV test to be part of the premarital ceremonies. There is a so cial embarrassment involved in asking the ‘other side’ to produce a certificate. So, Maharashtra Law Graduate Association, an NGO, had filed a PIL in the Bombay High Court seeking to make the pre marital HIV test mandatory. A committee set up in December 2007 by the state health ministry has unanimously decided to accept the proposal.

Are motorcycles safe?

Following the deaths of four motorcycle riders in separate accidents in Navi Mumbai, a PIL was filed in the Bombay High Court in 2007. It sought strict implementation of safety norms by two-wheel er manufacturers. The petitioner, Gyan Prakash from Jabalpur, has pointed out that two-wheeler accidents accounted for 15.1 per cent of all acci dents across India. As many as 2,439 riders died in accidents in 2005. The PIL has alleged that motor cycle manufacturers were cutting corners on safe ty norms. The matter is pending in court.

Cruel online lotteries

 An undated PIL before the Supreme Court has claimed that online lotteries were addictive and as a result they were severely affecting the lives of the poor and the youth. The litigation states that the young especially are not aware of the ill effects of lottery, and that the online version makes lottery an easily accessible habit. While considering the petition, the Supreme Court on January 11, 2008 sought a response from the union government and three state governments—West Bengal, Sikkim and Tripura on their online lot tery schemes 

Health of the nation

There have been numerous PILs in this regard In Delhi, at a shelter home, 11 children died last year. The Delhi High Court is hearing a PIL on the way shelter homes for abandoned children are run Also, with 24 municipal conservancy workers, on an average, dying every month due to abysmal working conditions, activist Keval Semlani wrote a letter to the Bombay High Court to make life bet ter for such workers. The letter was converted into a PIL by the court. The hearing continues. Mean while, children and men of small frame continue to get into manholes with no protective gear.

A PIL seeking the ban on the manufacture of Nimesulide (one of the most commonly used anti inflammatory drugs) was filed in the Madras High Court. Tamil Nadu Health Development Forum filed the PIL citing a number of side effects of the drug like liver and renal failure among children The PIL states that the drug has been banned in several countries. But the court has refused to di rect the central government to impose a ban. The matter might be taken up in the apex court.

Converts and Reservation

 Can Dalits who converted to Christianity get the benefit of reservations? Last month, the Cen tre assured the Supreme Court that it will study the report of a commission which examined the issue of granting Scheduled Caste status to Dalit Christians and extending the benefits of reser vation to them. An advocate appearing for Cen tre for Public Interest Litigation, an NGO, says the matter has been pending in the court for more than three years and should be heard urgently.

Are homosexuals criminals?

India is one of the most repressive nations for homosexuals. Since the law has clear views about homosexual conduct, gays in India face easy ex ploitation by police if caught in the act. In De cember 2002, the Naz Foundation filed a PIL in the Delhi High Court challenging the discretionary statutes on the grounds that it violated the con stitutional rights of sexual minorities in India and also interfered with the provision of HIV/AIDS prevention services. In 2005, the High Court dismissed the petition. Following a special leave petition, the Supreme Court in February 2006 set aside the order, and remanded the case back to the Delhi High Court for a decision on the merits of the case.

Why immerse Ganesha?

Activist Bhagvanji Raiyani has filed a PIL in the Bombay High Court asking for the ban on the annual immersion of Ganpati and Durga idols. The immersion of the idols in the sea by thousands of revellers causes large scale pollution. The litigation says that the sacred texts do not mention immersion at all. TNN (With Dhananjay Mahapatra and Bhanu Pratap Singh) …

And the most useless PILs

There are many who file PILs to attract publicity. Lawyers in small towns are known to slap frivolous cases against film stars in the hope that the actors would be forced to visit their modest courts. Here is a quick list.

The apex court recently dismissed a PIL filed by a man in Lucknow called Prince Lenin to recall the Indian cricket team from Australia to save the players from racial insults.

In February last year, lawyer Shruti Singh filed a PIL in the Patna High Court against Aishwarya Rai marrying a tree. “If Aishwarya was declared a maanglik, she was insulted by her mother in-law, an MP who vowed to safeguard the Constitution,” Singh said. The case was thrown out. Shruti Singh had also filed a PIL against former union minister Sanjay Paswan for encouraging witchcraft.

  Last year, the Patna High Court slapped a fine of Rs 10,000 on an advocate for wasting its time. He filed a PIL against Manmohan Singh challenging his continuance as Prime Minister despite not being a member of the Lok Sabha.

The Delhi High Court recently imposed a fine of Rs 5000 on a petitioner who filed a PIL seeking direction to the organisers of a village Ramleela to desist from staging item songs.

Ketan Tanna meets the man who has put his spare flat to good use
Mumbai: Cancer is a cruel and expensive disease. It drains you physically and exhausts you financially. And for the thousands of families who travel to Mumbai for treatment, one of the most challenging hurdles is to find a cheap and safe place to stay while the patient is being treated. Which is why a threebedroom flat in Kandivli is like an answer to a prayer.
    A few years ago, businessman Suresh Agarwal, 47, realised that accommodation for outstation families was a crying need. For the last two years, his spare flat in Kandivli’s Lokhandwala area has been hosting cancer patients and their relatives who have not been able to get accommodation at Tata Memorial Hospital or Hinduja Hospital.
    On an average, four patients are allowed to stay in the flat for up to three months. The flat is furnished and has a proper kitchen where the patients or their family members can cook as well.The lodging is free, and all that is needed is a letter from the doctor treating the patient. So far, 45 patients have used this generous facility.
    It’s not just free boarding that Agarwal provides. Last week, he organised a musical show called Amit Kumar Night that raised Rs 35 lakh for Hinduja Hospital. Around two years ago, another musical event called the Vinod Rathod Night had raised Rs 15 lakh for the hospital.
    Agarwal, who runs a plastic factory in Daman, knows too well the havoc cancer can cause to family life. His younger brother Sushil, now 45, was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1987.
    His brother-in-law, too, developed lung cancer in 1992 and later the wife of his brother-in-law was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
    What followed were almost daily visits to Hinduja where he became friends with the doctors and the management of the hospital. Even after his brother and relatives recovered, Agarwal continued to visit the hospital. On one such round, he noticed a frail person sobbing in the waiting area. He found out that the man’s treatment had been stopped midway as he was unable to pay.
    It was then that Agarwal decided that he had to do something. After consulting the management, Agarwal decided to create a corpus so that each time there was a needy patient, the corpus could be used. It has helped many patients.
    The Agarwal family has its roots in Assam. Soon after Sushil was treated successfully, they started getting requests for help from cancer patients from that state. “An empty flat near my home spurred me into offering it free to needy cancer patients,’’ says Agarwal.
    Dr Asha Kapadia, head of the oncology department at Hinduja Hospital, says, “I wish we had more people like him.’’ Suresh Agarwal can be contacted on 98200 65184

Ketan Tanna 
profiles doctors who battle noise Once, on the eve of Ganesh Visarjan, a retired scientist put up a banner asking, “Is god deaf?”

    One Diwali night, gynecologist Prabhakar Rao called the Juhu police station to complain about the deafening noise in his area. But nobody was willing to take him seriously. It was Diwali after all. A few hours later, a bored constable arrived. “What do you mean there is so much noise?” the constable said, “I can’t hear any noise. In any case, there will be noise when crackers burst. And do you have any proof that the crackers were really loud?”
    Rao had no choice but to chuckle. By then, he was used to this attitude. He is one of the busybodies disliked by law enforcement in Mumbai. Along with pediatrician Yeshwant Oke and late businessman Saad Ali, he founded the Anti Noise Pollution Committee in 1984. The group took on the government and paved the way for the first of the many anti-noise court battles. They tried some desperate measures too. Once, on the eve of Ganesh Visarjan, retired scientist T N Mahadevan and friends put up a banner in the heart of Maratha pride, Lalbaug. The banner pointedly asked in Marathi, “Dev Behra Aahe Ka?” (Is god deaf ?). The banner, of course, created more noise.
    After a study of Society for Clean Environment in 1985 found that decibel levels in residential areas during festivals like Diwali were over 115 decibels (busy city traffic is generally at 85
decibels) Oke and other concerned citizens filed a writ petition in the Bombay High Court against the state government, BMC and the Mumbai police. The court then appointed an eight member committee to study noise pollution in Mumbai and suggest remedial measures. The Desai committee, as it was called, came up with an in-depth report on the harmful effects of noise.
    Some people say that noise is a natural part of Indian way of life but the truth is that it routinely has tragic consequences. Recently, an old woman died of cardiac arrest after a cracker went off suddenly at two in the morning. The drum beating and noise during Ganesh Visarjan procession greatly agonise old people and children.
    Oke was inspired to campaign against noise sometime in 1984 when he got a letter from Pachore village, near Jalgaon. The letter said that the desperate villagers were caught in the unbearable noise of secularism. In the morning, bhajans rented the air and in the evenings namaz and discourses tore the eardrums. Despite complaints, the police did not want to interfere.
    Twenty years after receiving the letter, 72-year-old Oke is still going strong. Some of the old guards have died but the group is constantly replenished by new dedicated members. As the photographer makes them pose, host of the afternoon congregation, Prabhakar Rao jokes, “We did not know that we are such good actors in addition to being doctors.” Seventy-twoyear-old Rao had a major surgery last year but he says that will not limit his fight against noise polluters.
    They enjoy these meetings and that is evident when, one by one, the members troop in. Since all of them are doctors, the talk inevitably veers towards the medical problems induced by loud noise. One of the cruelest ironies of life is that noise eventually causes deafness and these doctors only know that too well. “It is now established that noise pollution may rupture the eardrum, and even induce cardiac and cardiovascular changes, fatigue and also cause sleep disturbances, headache and insomnia,” Oke says.
    After the first writ petition filed by Dr Oke and friends, came the landmark Environment Protection Act of 1986, which notified ‘noise’ as a pollutant. It laid down a fine of up to Rs 1,00,000 or imprisonment up to five years or both
    The Maharashtra government, on its part, extended the time limit for loudspeaker use from 11 pm to 11 30 pm, and gave discretionary powers to the Commissioner of Police to extend this even further. Oke and other concerned citizens filed a second writ petition against the state government. Eventually they issued a legal notice to the police commissioners of Mumbai and Pune. A direct fall out was prohibition of loudspeakers from 10 pm to 6 am. Dandiya and other such blaring festivals took a direct hit. But in 2002, the environment ministry hurriedly amended the law permitting loudspeaker use from 10 pm to midnight for 15 designated days in a calendar year for religious and cultural events.
    It is official. In India, God is indeed deaf. But some old people will continue the battle.
ADMISSIONS OPEN
Membership of the Anti Noise Pollution Committee is free.
Dr Oke can be contacted on yeshwantoke@yahoo.com 
    VOICE OF INDIA
Permissible noise level in residential areas: 55 decibels Loud Speaker: 75-115 db Drilling Machine: 90-100 db Vehicles-Horns: 80-84 db Typewriter: 50-60 db

Wrong man in jail for 50 days on cyber charge
3 Nov 2007, 0227 hrs IST,Ketan Tanna,TNN

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2513737.cms
MUMBAI: In the early hours of August 31, Lakshmana Kailash K was asleep at his home in Bangalore. He was woken up by eight policemen from Pune who came knocking on his door and waved the Information Technology Act, 2000, in his sleepy, terrified face. Get dressed, he was told, we are taking you to Pune for having defamed Shivaji. Lakshmana protested that he didn’t know anyone called Shivaji. The policemen said that they were talking about Chhatrapati Shivaji and that an insulting picture of him had been uploaded on the Internet networking site, Orkut. The trail had led them to his computer in Bangalore. Turning a deaf ear to his protests, the cops took him to Pune and put him behind bars. Along the way, the 26-year-old Lakshmana, who works with HCL, learned that what he was being arrested for was a case that had triggered riots in Pune in November 2006. Political parties had forcibly closed cybercafes and gone on a rampage over the posting of the illustration which had poked fun at Shivaji. Lakshmana was released after spending 50 days in jail, three weeks after the cops claimed to have nabbed the “real culprits”.

==============================

We made a mistake, so what, says Police
3 Nov 2007, 0438 hrs IST,Ketan Tanna,TNN

MUMBAI: In a case of misplaced justice, 26-year-old Lakshmana was released 50 days after authorities arrested him for ‘defaming’ Shivaji. Google, which owns Orkut , had cooperated with Mumbai police but the vital IP address — the unique number for an internet connection — was provided by service provider Bharti Airtel. Bharti said the IP address belonged to a Lakshmana K who lived in Bangalore.

His first bail plea was rejected. Finally, on October 20, after spending 50 days with 200 undertrials at Yerawada Jail, Lakshmana was released. Sorry, said the police, the IP address given to us was wrong. We are sorry, said Airtel, and “deeply distressed by the severe inconvenience”.

To add insult to injury, the police released Lakshmana nearly three weeks after they claimed to have picked up the “real culprits” on October 3 — three Bangalore boys, all now in judicial custody. Asked about the earlier arrest, assistant commissioner Netaji Shinde says, “Yes, we made a mistake. So what?”

Bharti was a little more contrite but made no mention of compensation. “We are in touch with the customer. We have robust internal processes which we review frequently to make them more stringent,” the company said in a response to TOI. “We have conducted a thorough investigation and will take appropriate action.”

Lakshmana’s ordeal has uncanny resonances of Kafka’s The Trial , the more so because his name has the same initial K as Kafka’s hapless protagonist. K is arrested one morning before breakfast on a non-charge and is left to battle the state’s mindless might.

Lakshmana was charged under Section 295A of the IPC for a deliberate and malicious act intended to outrage religious feelings, and Section 67 of the IT Act for publishing “lascivious” material. The latter charge carries a punishment of five years.

Like Kafka’s K, Lakshmana tried initially to be brave. But he cracked when he was made to pose for a photograph with a black slate carrying his father’s name and his alleged crime. “It hurt me a lot that my father, a retired banker, was being associated with a crime. I just broke down,” he says.

“We were given a vati (bowl) which we had to eat and drink from and even take to the toilet. The long queues for filling water in the vati was our survival routine,” says Lakshmana. His kidney stones started acting up and his health deteriorated. “Because of depression and the bad food, I lost 12 kilos,” he says.

He’s back home now trying to put it all behind. HCL has been supportive but Lakshmana is not sure whether his job still exists.

“I have forgotten coding. I need to start all over,” he says. Asked if he planned to sue for compensation, Lakshmana is philosophical. “My family is considering it. Right now, I’m just beginning to appreciate the small things in life. It’s good to have a toilet to oneself. It’s good to have clean drinking water. It’s good to have family to quarrel with.”

Two days after his return, Airtel got in touch. But it wasn’t about the arrest. They sent him a SMS reminding him to pay his bill. This was followed up by a visit from a collection agent.

“I told them it’s all because of you that I haven’t paid,” says Lakshmana. “We can’t pay bills from jail.”

WORLD REACTS

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