Tag Archive for ‘Crime’ at Asian Window

Tag Archive for 'Crime'

The significance of Kaminey: Social dystopia or entrepreneurial fantasy

Published

on September 29, 2009

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M K Raghavendra, a film scholar and critic, argues that “celebration of social decay started with the film Satya, and Kaminey takes this to a new high.” From the Economic and Political Weekly:

Urban criminals, until the mid-1990s, were not glamorous figures in Hindi popular cinema, and only people led astray (as in Deewar 1975) became criminals. The film that changed this was perhaps Ram Gopal Varma’s Satya (1999). Satya appeared “realistic” but had a discourse interpretable in the context of the economic liberalisation initiated by P V Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh in 1991-92, which also marked the end of Nehruvian socialism. Law enforcement has been treated in different ways by Hindi cinema but Satya was the first film to treat the police as though they were no different from a private agency, made stronger by their indifference to the law. The protagonist of the film casually proposes the killing of the police commissioner as though he were a gangland rival and the police responds as another gang might have – by liquidating his group without attention to legality. More:

Goa bans beach parties

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on December 20, 2008

in India

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Beach parties in Goa will be banned over the Christmas and New Year because of security fears following the Mumbai terrorist.

“Taking into consideration all the aspects, we have decided that beach parties would not be allowed from December 23 to January 5,” Goa chief minister Digamber Kamat told reporters.Traditional ceremonies and parties in hotels will be unaffected.

Kishan Kumar, Goa’s police inspector general, told Reuters: “Obviously there is a security threat, but we cannot say anything more specific at the moment”.

Some 2.6 million tourists visit Goa each year, including about 400,000 foreign visitors.Tourist arrivals have fallen 20 percent since last month’s Mumbai attacks.

Murder he wrote

Published

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on November 16, 2008

in Books

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Has author and screenplay writer Farrukh Dhondy’s novel “The Bikini Murders” (Harper Collins) been inspired by the life of playboy-criminal Charles Sobhraj?

On Wikipedia, Sobhraj’s profile starts as: “…a French serial killer of Indian and Vietnamese origin, who preyed on Western tourists throughout Southeast Asia during the 1970s. Nicknamed “the Serpent” and “the Bikini killer” for his skills at deception and evasion, he allegedly committed at least 12 murders and was jailed in India from 1976 to 1997, but managed to live a life of leisure in prison. He retired as a celebrity in Paris, then unexpectedly returned to Nepal, where he was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment on August 12, 2004.”

In Hindustan Times, Farrukh Dhondy on the man and his book:

The narrative is largely a confession by one Johnson Thhat, born in Saigon to a Vietnamese mother and Indian father, a devious man with a natural proclivity towards crime. The novel is replete with a likeness to Sobhraj both physically and in incident, which makes it hard to desist comparison. Dhondy does admit that the book didn’t exist until Sobhraj sought him out. “He was fresh out of Tihar and was referred to me as the best man in Europe to find him a publisher. I was with a channel and thought there was something for me in this alliance,” Dhondy mentions casually.

Over three years of knowing the elusive and most wanted Sobhraj, Dhondy couldn’t elicit a confession, save for that of a jewellery theft and his real name. “It’s Gurudev Bhavnani. His father’s name is Sobhraj Bhavnani, but his French stepfather wouldn’t call him that, hence Charles,” Dhondy shares as testimony to their association.

Czech butterfly collector flees India

Published

asianwindow

on October 30, 2008

in Crime and Wildlife

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Compiled from dispatches:

Svacha and Kucera

In August this year, two Czech nationals were arrested “for stealing insects” near the Singalila National Park in Darjeeling. In September, the two — Prague-based entomologist Petr Svacha and his colleague Emil Kucera — were convicted by a local court.

Last week, Kucera, 52, who was sentenced to three years imprisonment for collecting rare insects without permission, fled the country after jumping bail and has reached his home country. Mr Svacha was let off with a fine. Details of the story here and here.

On October 26, after Kucera reached home, a Czech republic-based scientist wrote on his blog, The Reference Frame: “He (Kucera )has contacted his girlfriend in Czechia and asked her for contacts in India, a credit card, plus his second legally held passport. After four kilometers in a Jeep, he spent two hours by getting into Nepal. Again a Jeep, and a bus, and a fine in Nepal for being there without visas. Finally, he legally received the Nepali visas, after some discussions and 2,000 rupees (= USD 40) in bribes (an online interview with readers), and bought an air ticket to Bangkok, Frankfurt, and Prague from a travel agency. That’s what I call transparency. ”

And he quotes Kucera’s letter written after reaching home: “…because it’s been quite some time since I began to feel that Darjeeling District is not able to guarantee my right for a fair trial, I decided to solve the difficult situation by a graceful exit of mine. At this moment, I am already on the territory of the Czech Republic. ” More:

A mother’s appeal

Published

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on October 11, 2008

in Crime and India

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Jyotirmaya Sharma in Hindustan Times:

I am sitting in the fashionable Azabu Juban area of Tokyo with a little lady, who speaks to me through an interpreter. Her eyes are vacant, perhaps searching for a sense of closure.

Her son, Kota Shinozaki, a 21-year-old Keio University student, from Saitama in Japan, arrived at the Delhi International Airport from Tokyo on September 3, 2006, at 2 am. On the same day, he purchased a package tour from a travel agent in New Delhi, which would take him to Jaipur and Agra by car, and eventually to Varanasi, Kolkata and, finally, back to Delhi by train. He left Delhi the same day for Jaipur, and reached Agra on September 5 from Jaipur with a driver named Raju.

The same afternoon, he checked into the Chanakya Hotel in Agra. He went to see the Taj Mahal with the driver and one Lalta Prasad Gautam, a Japanese-speaking guide introduced to him by the driver. The trio came back to the hotel around 5 pm. The next morning, when the driver came to the hotel to pick up Kota, there was no sign of him. His bed had not been slept in, and his belongings had disappeared. According to the hotel records, he had checked out. The driver did not report Kota’s disappearance to the police or the Japanese embassy.

India’s novel use of brain scans in courts

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on September 15, 2008

in Technology

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India has become the first country to convict someone of a crime relying on evidence from a controversial brain scan test that produces images of the human mind in action. Anand Giridharadas in the New York Times:

Mumbai: The new technology is, to its critics, Orwellian. Others view it as a silver bullet against terrorism that could render waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods obsolete. Some scientists predict the end of lying as we know it.

Now, well before any consensus on the technology’s readiness, India has become the first country to convict someone of a crime relying on evidence from this controversial machine: a brain scanner that produces images of the human mind in action and is said to reveal signs that a suspect remembers details of the crime in question.

For years, scientists have peered into the brain and sought to identify deception. They have shot infrared beams through liars’ heads, placed them in giant magnetic resonance imaging machines and used scanners to track their eyeballs. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States has plowed money into brain-based lie detection in the hope of producing more fruitful counterterrorism investigations.

14 years later, godman gets life term for killing his wife

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on July 23, 2008

in Crime

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On May 28, 1991, self-proclaimed godman Shraddananda, otherwise known as Murli Manohar Mishra, drugged his wife Begum Shakereh Namazi Khaleeli, placed her in a coffin and then proceeded to bury her alive in the compound of her bungalow in Richmond Road, Bangalore.

The granddaughter of the former Dewan of Mysore, the Begum had met the ‘godman’ in Madhya Pradesh in the mid 1980s while she was still married to diplomat, Akbar Khaleeli. She was so besotted by the godman that she divorced her husband in 1986 and married Shraddananda instead.

When the Begum disappeared in 1991, her daughters from her previous marriage began asking the godman about her whereabouts. He told them she had gone abroad. Then, in 1994, her daughter Sabah filed a missing persons report that prompted an investigation that led to the discovery of the Begum’s body.

On Tuesday, July 22, the 14-year-old murder trial came to an end with the Supreme Court handing down a life sentence to Shaddananda who is now 72-years-old. The court ruled that he will remain in jail for the rest of his days. The Hindu has a report

The 14-year-long legal trial of one of the most sensational murder cases of Karnataka has come to an end with the Supreme Court on Tuesday awarding life sentence to the self-styled godman Swami Shraddananda (72), for murdering his wife Begum Shakereh Namazi Khaleeli.

The murder that was reported from Ashoknagar police station limits in central Bangalore had grabbed the attention of the public, the police and legal fraternity. According to the charge sheet filed in jurisdictional court in Bangalore by the then Inspector C. Veeraiah of the Central Crime Branch (CCB) who investigated the case, Shraddananda had drugged Shakereh, placed her body in a coffin and buried it in a corner of the compound of her palatial bungalow on Richmond Road on April 28, 1991.

[Asian Window: In an email to us, Essmath Khaleeli, Shakereh's youngest daughter clarifies that her mother "was murdered on the 28th of May, 1991."]

The land where the hippy trail reaches a historic impasse

Published

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on March 21, 2008

in Travel

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Adventurous travellers have found many things in Goa. Innocent escape was never one of them. Ian Jack in The Guardian, UK:

Fiona MacKeown was by no means the first parent of a large family to travel from a rambling home in rural western England, in the middle of a damp winter, and see what Goa had to offer by way of diversion. Evelyn Waugh had six children (a seventh died in infancy); Fiona MacKeown had nine (eight since February 15, when her 15-year-old daughter Scarlett Keeling was found dead on the beach at Anjuna). Waugh travelled from Piers Court, a Georgian mansion in Gloucestershire. MacKeown came from a huddle of caravans near Bideford, Devon, a home summarised as “a mountain of old tyres … empty beer bottles … and rubbish” by Wednesday’s Daily Mail. But the bigger difference is that Waugh left his children behind.

He came to Goa in December 1952. “The scenery [is] delicious … the people soft and friendly,” he wrote to his wife.

Goa: A creaky paradise

Published

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on March 14, 2008

in Society

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“Forty years ago, Goa was a trip. Now it’s also a business, a disease,” writes Sudeep Chakravarti in Hindustan Times. Chakravarti’s novel, Once Upon a Time in Aparanta, set in present-day Goa, will be published later this year.

Two days ago, a friend and I were breakfasting at a chic café in Baga, a bizarre Goan confluence of the digital hippie, Indian yuppie and those whom I simply call Charter Jack and Charter Jane – “Oi, mate!” and chips with everything. A French couple, replete with tattoos, wearing worn clothes, BO, and a girl of about six came and sat by us, burnt some charas, rolled a joint, and began to fumigate the vicinity. My friend, a Goan preparing to adopt a girl, was outraged at the couple’s nonchalance in doing something so openly in Goa that would land them in jail in their own country, besides possibly placing their daughter under State care.

“I can’t believe these guys,” she spat. “They should be whipped. And this Scarlette,” she continued, “how could her mother leave a 15-year-old girl by herself in this day and age, in an area known to be unsafe, known for drugs and raves and what not and go away on her travels? Would she do that in England? No. But this is Goa, right? So now the girl is dead.”

Scarlette Eden Keeling, flower-child of a flower-parent, is dead, after allegedly being on an extended trip of substance abuse, after allegedly being raped by a manager of a shack at Anjuna beach. Less than an hour’s drive north of where I live, in Panjim, Anjuna was once the eastern extremity of Woodstock.

Mothers and monsters

In the media’s hands, Scarlett Keeting’s mother Fiona MacKeown has become a scapegoat for the middle classes. Madeleine Bunting in The Guardian, UK:

Compassion is not a response the media seem able to sustain. That small window that affords a degree of respect for the grief of the bereaved seems to shrink ever more, but even so the treatment of Fiona MacKeown, the mother of the 15-year-old murdered on a Goa beach, has plumbed new depths of harsh judgmentalism.

While MacKeown struggles to get the police to take on the case of her daughter’s killing, she has a second child lying in hospital in the UK with a broken neck from a car accident that happened shortly before her daughter’s death. This goes well beyond the platitude of a mother’s worst nightmare. Yet even such circumstances have not inhibited the torrent of criticism and contempt that has poured down on this woman’s head. Open season has been declared on every part of her family life, her parenting style and even her appearance. She is blamed for abandoning her daughter in a resort while continuing her travels; accused of a recklessly indulgent style of parenting; and criticised for her mode of grieving. Almost every article refers to her hair – it is “lank”, a “curtain” and, most unforgivably, grey.

Previously on Asian Window:

A Nepal village that’s a kidney bank

Published

asianwindow

on February 10, 2008

in Nepal

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In Hindustan Times, Anirban Roy visits a village in Nepal where at least one member from each family has sold their kidneys in India.

Madhav Parajuli, a 33-year-old farmer, said he was taken to Gurgaon near New Delhi to donate his kidney and was cheated on the payment promised to him. He wants the government to compensate him now that the key accused in India’s illegal kidney transplant scam has been arrested.

Dipak Nepal, 23, had a narrow escape. “They took me to Delhi with the promise to pay 1.5 lakhs (Nepali rupees). But when they started bargaining with me saying they will only pay 45,000 rupees, I ran away.”

Wealth brings servants, and much nervousness in India

Published

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on February 2, 2008

in Society

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Amelia Gentleman in International Herald Tribune.

New Delhi: Aruna Kapoor had been having servant trouble for some time. She fired one man for drunkenness, and she lost a second when he decided to start up a roadside tea stall. So she was thrilled when Shankar, a young man from Nepal, knocked on her door in early January and offered his services as a cook. She hired him on the spot.

Five days later, he prepared a dinner of two kinds of vegetable curry, lentil dal and a sweet rice pudding, known as kir. The food was laced copiously with sleeping tablets, doctors said later, and shortly after the meal Aruna, 65, lay down on the sofa and passed out. Her husband, Harish, a retired advertising executive, 72, collapsed over his plate at the table. The dog, Striker, and their daughter, Sumita, were also drugged. All four were found, still unconscious, the following morning.

Stolen kidneys: A shocking scam

Published

asianwindow

on January 31, 2008

in Crime

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And in The New York Times, a report by Amelia Gentleman:

As the anesthetic wore off, Naseem Mohammed said, he felt an acute pain in the lower left side of his abdomen. Fighting drowsiness, he fumbled beneath the unfamiliar folds of a green medical gown and traced his fingers over a bandage attached with surgical tape. An armed guard by the door told him that his kidney had been removed.

Duke president’s message about student’s death

Published

asianwindow

on January 23, 2008

in Crime

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This comes to us via the SAJA Forum

From: President Richard Brodhead <president-announce@duke.edu>
Date: January 21, 2008 10:36:10 PM EST
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: A Message to the Duke Community from President Brodhead

Dear Member of the Duke University Community,

I write to share my great sadness over the sudden and senseless death of Abhijit Mahato, a graduate student in the Pratt School of Engineering, who was murdered in his off-campus apartment this weekend. Having spoken with Professor Tod Laursen, in whose lab Abhijit was making important contributions, I have a sense of his great promise and endearing character. I extend my sympathy to Abhijit’s friends and colleagues and to all members of the Indian and Hindu community for this appalling loss. A celebration of his life will be held in Duke Chapel later this week. Continue reading ‘Duke president’s message about student’s death’

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