No, this isn’t about SRK’s son, really

Aryan Khan (L) is among the accused in the cruise liner drugs case while Armaan Kohli (R) is also in jail since August-end after he was found with 1.2 grams of cocaine. File pic

An upscale four-lane flyover recently came up in Chunabhatti, so that you can glide over drainage for Mithi river, connecting directly to Mumbai's swanky office district - Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC). Soon as we started taking this aerial route, we realised a curious trap had been set around the flyover's BKC landing.

With juvenile delinquents in fancy-dress clothes, hiding at the bend. Only, this bunch were adults, in actual traffic cop uniforms, heroically startling you with a "gotcha/dhappa" - if you were on a bike!

Because? Bikes aren't allowed on the stretch! Although they are, on both ends, where the flyover takes off. This game's been going on, because that's what bad laws do. They incentivise enforcers to get lazy - simply stand in a corner, phadoing receipts for (relatively low-level) offences, that anyway don't make much sense.

Easy peasy! And they are upholding the law. As were the lot most enthusiastically fining drivers, alone in a car, without a mask on, during COVID-19 - even when the damn car's the mask, if you're alone, no?

Never mind if the intent matches the outcome, or if the two are even related, or that some laws are simply irrelevant/archaic. The issue goes beyond the flyover cowboys when the point of a law's continuous existence is to leave a fat hole, either for the enforcer's mood/interpretation, or timed harassment.

It's there because it's there. Just so they can catch low-hanging fruits with it? As against hardened/organised criminals (that are more dangerous to chase and nab)? Even better, if those laws make the transient political masters potentially trigger-happy? Or, maybe that is the point.

This can range from the colonial sedition laws, so easily applied to post-college-type kids, passionate activists - fighting against other bad laws, but deemed to be warring against their own homeland, apparently. Or it could be about hotels (Sarai Act, 1867), where you can book owners if they didn't serve you water. Google India's ‘bad laws', the list is quite exhausting.

Take the Bombay Prohibition Act, 1949. While prohibition's been effectively lifted in Maharashtra, one ACP-rank policeman in the employ (Dhoble) can evidently wield hockey sticks with it, travelling with video cameras, ramming through F&B establishments in the city, detaining harmless customers, booking owners - including a woman who once mixed liquor in her chocolate at home.

Why? Because, Dhoble felt like it, in 2012. Now we know his name. He was simply doing his job. No one since has as brainlessly bothered. But the law itself (consumer licences, permit room segregation, etc) persists. It simply depends on who's implementing, wherefrom flows power. Similar harassments continue, merely the sites change; most remain unreported. Who benefits? Good question.

Was the fact of 23 Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) men, deployed to eye a party cruise liner on October 2, that became national news, similar? Oh no, it's seemingly more personal/murky. As six of India's Narcos spent R4.8 lakh for cruise tickets, and returned with a drug haul of R1 lakh and change!

The Pablo Escobars they nabbed were a bunch of rando, young adults, on a weekend trip, paraded before television paparazzi, presumably invited by NCB itself. They let the actual cruise party continue, I'm told.

This massive operation involved top-level detective types, posing as cops, who turned out to be slightly shady men in their intentions. Now there's back and forth over who allegedly wanted what, from a subsequent money deal.

"We're informers," they told national TV cameras. Which is strange, as BV Kumar, former NCB chief, says: "Which informer will tell the whole world that he's one? Will get bumped off (by the crime/drug syndicate, no)?"

Among the young accused was the son of Shah Rukh Khan - an actor who first became a Bollywood hero with a film called Deewana (1992), which originally starred Armaan Kohli (he's there in the poster!). Where's Armaan Kohli? In Arthur Road Jail since August-end. They found 1.2 grams of cocaine on him ("small quantity," according to law, is 2 grams!).

The Dhoble-like man, similarly implicating actors like Rhea Chakraborty, Ajaz Khan, summoning Deepika Padukone, Rakul Preet Singh etc, is the regional NCB boss Sameer Wankhede. The basis is often WhatsApp messages - basically barging into a person's most private premises - interpreting what one likes, without permission, or context.

Here's why this isn't about SRK's son. We should be more worried for regular Rameshes, whose lives cameras don't follow. And why Sameer's the symptom.

Look at the NDPS Act, imposed on India by the American government in 1985 - while nothing as draconian exists in America. This Indian Act (like the contentious/misused dowry legislation) upturns the idea of law itself, when human rights seem like privilege; and jail, as against bail, the norm - presuming guilt, until proven innocent.

There is hardly a distinction made between sadhu, smuggler and syndicate, let alone (recreational) user, and abuser - none even between drugs, herbal and chemical. No privacy guaranteed against public shame.

Unsurprisingly, around 98 per cent of drug-related cases in Maharashtra (in 2017 and 2018) concerned people with casual quantities found on them. Those were the enforcers solving Mumbai's traffic problems, playing tag behind BKC flyover! If these are the priorities for curbing a $650-billion global drug trade; honestly, lage gaye law!

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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