Illustration/Ravi Jadhav

Early last year, television journalist Sunetra Choudhury remembers receiving a photograph from Anca Neacsu, the Romanian wife of arms dealer Abhishek Verma, after she came out of jail. It was a picture of her wearing a Louis Vuitton inside prison. Anca would later tell Choudhury with chilling honesty: "If you steal Rs 1,000, the hawaldar will beat the sh** out of you and lock you up in a dungeon with no bulb or ventilation. If you steal Rs 55,000 crore, you get to stay in a 40-foot cell, which has four split units, Internet, fax, mobile phones and a staff of 10 to clean your shoes and cook your food." It's Anca's jail-time story that first led the journalist to unravel what incarceration meant to different people.