City techie sues cell co, police for Rs 20 crore

City techie sues cell co, police for Rs 20 crore
Ketan Tanna | TNN


ABangalore-based software engineer, Lakshmana Kailash K, who was wrongly jailed for 50 days last year by the Pune police cyber cell, has demanded Rs 20 crore in damages and slapped a legal notice on telecom giant Bharti Airtel, principal secretary (Home) Maharashtra government and assistant commissioner of police (financial & cyber crime unit), Pune police.
Lakshmana had been falsely accused of an internet crime — posting unseemly pictures of Chattrapati Shivaji on the web — and was arrested based on the internet protocol address provided by his internet service provider, Bharti. As it turned out, the IP address was not his.
But by the time the police confirmed this and acted on it, he had already spent 50 harrowing days at the Yerwada Jail with hardened criminals, had tasted lathi beatings and was made to use one bowl to both eat and for the toilet.
Lakshmana’s nightmare, first reported in TOI on Nov 3, 2007, sparked condemnation on the web with internet communities posting their outrage. The techie’s 10-page legal notice, a copy of which has been sent to the NHRC, vents anger at the way in which the police and judicial system made nonsense of his rights and highlights the degrading conditions within the jail. We are in touch with techie: Bharti
ABangalore-based software engineer, Lakshmana Kailash K, has sent a legal notice to the Pune police and the internet service provide — Bharti Airtel — for making him spend 50 days in a Pune jail and for implicating him in a false case.
In his notice, Lakshmana accuses Bharti Airtel officials of criminal negligence — first, for giving the wrong IP address, and second, for sharing personal details of their client with the police. A Bharti Airtel spokesperson said, “We fully understand the customer’s pain and have been in touch with him. But the matter is sub-judice and we are unable to comment further.’’
Lakshmana says Bharti’s CEO in Bangalore, Prem Pradeep, did meet him once after the case was splashed in the media. Pradeep, empathizing with him, insisted the police were to blame. Bharti, however, 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: “Financical compensation has a different dimension altogether.”
On August 31, 2007, Lakshmana was carted from Bangalore to Pune by the cyber police and arrested. He was not allowed to call his family or a lawyer, nor was he told what his crime was. He later learned 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 had given Lakshmana’s IP address. He was charged under both 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.
Bharti’s defence is that the police had not given them right information, mixing up the time of the posting and confusing AM for PM. But police say there was no such confusion and blamed Bharti. They further bungled up the case by releasing Lakshmana three weeks after picking up the “real culprits’’, three other Bangalore boys.