Techie recounts the trauma, social disgrace
Mumbai: Lakshmana Kailash K, the techie who had to undergo the horror of Yerwada jail for no crime of his, says that Bharti Airtel’s CEO in Bangalore, Prem Pradeep, did meet him once after the case was in the news. Pradeep insisted that the police were to blame; however, Bharti wished to make amends by offering him a job at Airtel and psychological counselling to help him get over the experience. Lakshmana turned down both offers and asked if there was any monetary input, to which Pradeep allegedly replied that “financial compensation was a different dimension altogether’’.
On August 31, 2007, a quaking Lakshmana was carted from Bangalore to Pune by the Pune cyber police and clapped behind bars. He was not allowed to call his family or a lawyer, nor was he told what his crime was. He later learned that he was supposed to have defamed Chhatrapati Shivaji on Orkut. The Shivaji pictures that had been posted on the site by an unknown party had caused minor rioting in Pune. The police had asked the internet providers for assistance to trace the source of the pictures and Bharti Airtel said that the IP address belonged to Lakshmana. He was charged under the IPC for a deliberate and malicious act intended to outrage religious feelings and the IT Act for publishing ‘lascivious’ material, a charge which carries a punishment of five years’. Critics have called the IT Act draconian.
Bharti’s defence is that the police had not given them the right information, mixing up the time of the posting and confusing AM for PM. But the police maintain that there was no such confusion and that Bharti was at fault. The case was further bungled by the police releasing Lakshmana nearly three weeks after picking up the “real culprits’’, three other Bangalore boys.
Lakshmana’s notice says that his incarceration resulted in his losing 12 kilos and that his family was in a state of trauma throughout. Socially too the disgrace had been hard to deal with, but what was most devastating was his time spent in jail. Lakshmana says he was stripped in front of other inmates, including women officials, beaten with lathis and told to pluck grass from patches soiled with human waste.
There were three toilets for 400 inmates with an average waiting time of 30 minutes—if a person took more than a few minutes inside, the other prisoners would throw stones or open the toilet and abuse him. Bathing was like a mini war since water for bathing and laundry was supplied for all of 15 minutes from an overhead tank.
The food was inedible and sleeping impossible with “blood-sucking bugs, snoring inmates and a dormitory fully lit through the night’’. He had to sleep on the floor and by way of bedding was given “two badly-used, soiled and unwashed bed sheets’’.