Kailasa!

Kailash Kher is a Delhiite to the core. Street-smart, can catch the nerve of the crowd in front of whom he is performing and has always been a wanderer to the core. In 12 years he shifted 26 houses within Delhi. Well, that sums up his attitude – always asking for more and never satisfied with what he has. With 200 commercial film songs, 300 jingles and an album – Kailasa - under his belt, sky is the limit for him. And only thing he knows, he says, is his “unique talent coupled with intelligence”.

“My voice is a gift of God, but lot of people have it. I reached the heights, because people used to tell me that I am very intelligent when I was a child. Maybe I have used my intelligence to nurture the gift of God that I have,” he says looking content to the core and showing an exuberance of a child.

But why Sufi? “When I started, classical music was a long road, especially for people not having the right pedigree. Pop, too was boring to an extent, as people cannot carry on dancing. So I chose the middle path – Sufi. It can move the emotions of the corporate world too as well as the kids will also love them. It has energy in it.”

After wandering on the streets of Delhi for 12 years, in 2001 Kailash Kher decided to move to the dream City –Mumbai. Although he had its own trials and tribulations there, but it was just a matter of a year and a half there that things picked up in the right direction for him. “I struggled a lot initially but I had faith in me,” he adds.

However, with Allah Ke Bande, Kailash Kher got an instant fame, especially with him featuring in the movie while playing the song. “Well, I didn’t believe it since I just started my career that I would be featured in the movie while playing the song. I though it was a fluke. Moreover, when I asked the name of the movie while it was being shot from Vishal (music director), he said ‘Waisa Bhi Hota Hai’. I thought ‘waisa bhi hota hoga’; it happens like this in Bollywood too that they don’t decide the movie name and are already shooting for the movie. I was just a starter so I kept mum. To top it all, I didn’t even know who Arshad Warsi (hero of the movie) was? I called up my sister in Delhi to ask about his credentials. Well, what happened after the movie was out is history.”

Although people thought that he is just a one-song wonder. “They thought I got famous in fluke. But after one song and another, I kept my consistency going.”
With solid footing in Bollywood now, people quite relate Kailash Kher to as Bollywood singer, Kailash feels, “I am a singer but I like to do it solo. For movies, one has to listen to the music director but for making my own album, I like doing my own composition. That way I can express my own feelings. Kailasa is doing very well and now I am working on my second album Kailasa II.”

Regarding the Hyderabad connection of shooting of his two numbers of Kailasa, Teri Deewani and Tauba Tauba, he says, “It was never in my thoughts that I would shoot in Hyderabad. It was sheer shortage of money, which forced me to go to Hyderabad. The video director was already shooting in Hyderabad. When I called him to Mumbai, he asked me to join him there as his entire crew was already there. So it just happened by chance.”

Regarding Nusrat, the singer says, “I am inspired by his selection of the lyrics. In Sufi, I just listen to him only. I don’t listen to other singers. I am happy that Sufi has gained much acceptance now. It is the newest flavour of music and has a blend of spiritual as well as entertainment.”

Along the Arctic Circle

Living true to its motto, “Fighting spirit through sports and adventure”, 11 members of the Indian Navy undertook a grueling month long ski expedition into the Greenland Ice Cap in the Arctic region in July this year. A grueling task, the 600-kilometre journey was arduous and consisted of nerve-wracking moments for the team.
According to Commander Satyabrata Dam, team leader, “In this one-month, we didn’t see a single animal or a human face apart from the team members and even though the average intake of the members was around 4000 K Cal each day, each member lost weight ranging from four-12 Kg. Another interesting feature was that there was no sunset in the Arctic Circle.”
The team first went to the Vatnajokull Glacier, the third largest glacier in the world in Iceland and climbed Hvannadalshnukur (7100 ft), the highest peak in Iceland, through extreme bad weather conditions and zero visibility. The team also scaled an unnamed virgin peak at 11,000 ft approximately in the Mt Forrel region and named it the ‘Indian Peak’.

Encountering temperatures ranging from minus 10 to minus 35 degree Celsius and Hurricane blizzards averaging 50kmph, the team had its own nervous moments. “One of the team members fell into a deep crevice with his sledge. He was just in front of me so I saw him, otherwise we wouldn’t have known about the incident. I thought either he is dead or is badly injured. But luck would have it that his sledge got struck in between and he fell on top of it. So he was saved. It took three hours to rescue him and due to this, some of the members froze due to non-movement of the body. After taking him out, I had to go down the crevice to get his sled,” says Commander Dam, who at 41 years was the oldest member of the team while the youngest member was Sonam Tamchos, 20, from Ladakh.
According to Commmander Dam, “The chores of cooking and eating were most tedious, since blocks of ice had to be cut and melted for every need. It took hours to cut the ice and then melt over small fuel burners. The team had only one proper meal a day at night, and what we missed the most was the home-made pickles.”
A deep dug pit into ice would be the make shift kitchen with ice block walls cordoning off to keep the howling winds at bay. The team had only one proper meal a day at night. The day began with a meager meal of cereals in the morning, with a cup of coco and then during the skiing through the day, they would stop after every 1 hr or 1.30 hrs for 10 – 15 min active rest, when they would munch chocolates, cheese, biscuits, dry fish, meat, etc along with sips of water. This rest period could not exceed since once the body stopped skiing, it rapidly cooled down and one can freeze instantly. At the end of the day, when they put up the tents for night, they would have soup and a freeze dried food, like pasta, rice, etc.
Now just stop thinking about how they addressed the nature’s call!

The Team
a) Satyabrata Dam Cdr (Leader)
(b) KS Balaji Lt Cdr (Dy Leader)
(c) GP Pande Lt Cdr
(d) Ajay Sharma Surg Lt
(e) Avinash Khajuria Lt
(f) Raj Kumar MCERA I
(g) Rakesh Kumar POMA
(h) Vikas Kumar POMA
(j) Manoj Vats Sea I PT-III
(k) Sonam Tamchos MA I
(l) B Singh Sea I PT II

Tihar's tale: Pay and play

It is the biggest prison of South East Asia. Although Tihar jail has a sanctioned capacity of 5,648 prisoners, more than 13,000 are lodged here. Many of these are high profile prisoners - from former IG (Prisons, Haryana) RK Sharma, accused in the Shivani murder case, to Vikas Yadav, accused in the Nitish Katara murder case.
As the Capital awaits the arrival of Abu Salem, currently lodged in Mumbai, HT caught up with an undertrial (now acquitted from the courts), who was lodged in Jail Number 1 in Tihar for about two months to find what life for VIP prisoners is like inside Tihar. This is his account:
Convicts rule Tihar
"The first day I entered Tihar, I was in a state of shock. I had visited jails in Rajasthan and Punjab along with friends, but those jails were nothing like this one. I could hardly sleep the first night. No sooner had the clock struck five, I was woken up and put in line to clean toilets. When I saw the state of the toilets just couldn't do anything except want to puke.
The convicts, who are dressed in pure white clothes, are the guys who actually rule the jails. One convict came to me and told me that for a certain sum of money, I could have my way and wouldn't have to do this job while I was here. The price? Rs 10,000 a month to live a cool life without cleaning toilets or having to stand in line for food etc. I agreed. But because I knew another high profile undertrial who intervened on my behalf, I had to pay a discounted rate of only Rs 4,000 to a low ranked prison official. The only problem was that, when his superior came to know that I had paid, he too wanted his share. Once again, my friend intervened and I was saved from paying up.
VIP undertrials and convicts stay in rooms, which have no lock-up inside the jail premises. There are about four such rooms and each room has a television. They have all the luxuries in life, including a separate kitchen, a refrigerator, chef and servants. Outside their room is a badminton court where they can play any time they like.
For the non VIPs, however, conditions at Tihar are such that the greasy - and greedy - palms of the jail officials made life tough for me. They could see that I could afford to pay, and they wanted more. My parents were taken for a ride and my two-month stay in the jail cost them a little more than Rs one lakh.
Coming to food. One gets one subzi, a dal and four Pots at each meal. Paneer and milk are on the diet chart, but nobody gets these. Jail officials use rotten vegetables and the Pots are inedible. But here again, if you're willing to pay, you're OK; you can eat as much as you want. But if you can't afford to pay, you might not even get food, forget about rotten stuff. The tea is so watery at Tihar; I used to buy milk from the canteen and get my own tea made from the canteen guy.
In Tihar, you can buy whatever you want - even services of the poorer inmates to do menial jobs. I had an illegal Bangladeshi national for odd jobs. And believe me there's a mad rush among people to do such jobs.
Then, there was an Australian inmate who used to buy yeast. With this, we would fill a five-litre mineral water bottle with bananas or apply, add some sugar and after nine or 10 days, would have our own booze.
Now, inmates are allowed only two visits a week. But by paying off officials, my parents used to come three times in the week. For every visit they used to buy a Rs 200 coupon and give it to me. I used to transfer it on my swipe card. Through this swipe card, I could buy goods from the canteen. Things aren't cheap: a single Gold Flake cigarette costs Rs 50, and a joint of charas Rs 30. The problem was with lighting the cigarette, as matchboxes aren't allowed in the premises. We used to burn a piece of cloth by putting it on a glowing bulb and use this to light our cigarettes.
The prime place to stay in Tihar is the 'chandukhana'. This is one of the sections in Jail Number One, which has several lock-ups within the premises. There are three large dormitories, which are further compartmentalised into three sections. One of these sections is known as the 'chandukhana' where the privileged lot stay. To gain entry here, you must have the approval of an existing inmate, and pay anything between Rs 500 and Rs 5,000 (depending on how much the Tihar officials think you can afford) for the privilege. When I was in Tihar, there were only 10 men here, compared to over 500 prisoners in the other sections.
Prison routine falls into a predictable pattern. From 6 am to 12 noon, we could walk in the compound to get some fresh air. Between 4 pm and 6 pm, one could again come out of the lock-up. People who paid up were free to roam around inside the jail premises. For me, the best thing about Tihar was the library I read a lot and played basketball to kill time.
The most important thing to buy at Tihar is transportation to courts. There's a common bus. It will not stop on the way, whatever the provocation. This can be dangerous. People who get convicted by courts, can attack you with blades on the way back. This way, another case gets registered against them and they get to stay on as undertrials. The catch? Undertrials don't have to work, while convicts have to.
If you're willing to pay, you get to go to the courts in a special high-rise bus. It's not cheap. One has to pay Rs 10,000 per month. I used to travel along with Kashmiri terrorists who were involved in the Lajpat Nagar blasts. They used to mind their own business. They were well dressed too. The privilege extends to your time in the courts as well where you have the luxury of staying in a special lock-up away from other undertrials. For an additional charge, you can also get home-cooked food in the court lock-ups.
My two-month stay in Tihar changed my perspective on life. Corruption prevails at every level, from top to bottom. Jail officials realise that people like me can't live in hell, and are willing to pay for better standards. For poorer people such luxuries can be availed at a much lower cost. The motto of the jail staff is to extract as much as it can - perhaps the only exception is the Tamil Nadu police, posted there for security.
The day I was released, I got a stern statutory warning: "Don't talk about this to anyone or else..." But I am still doing it as it may help improve the conditions of other inmates.

Joint family: Arms and the man

Two months back Bareilly heralded the transfer of Anand Swarup as Senior Superintendent of Police, Bareilly with front page headlines of an encounter specialist coming to town. Media went agog over it. However, it’s been more than two months now and media is busy witnessing a different kind of spectacle, here. Almost every Saturday they have a bagful of stories of wife mending relationship with husband, brothers settling disputes and dowry cases and sometimes, they even act as judges in some cases. Well, thinking about covering an encounter is a thing of past now.
Everybody is involved in ‘Project Didi’. Be it community leaders, politicians, police, journalists and social workers. They all are a part of the surrogate joint family and pronounce judgements relating to family and marital disputes and try to settle it amicably without registering a case. If the concerned person is still unhappy about the judgement, they can lodge an FIR and then proceed to court.
Again this is the brainchild of SSP Anand Swarup who started this project in Bareilly in 2002 during his previous posting. He continued this project to wherever he went in Etah, in Firozabad and now back again in his old robes in Bareilly. “After a certain point of time in your career when you begin to realise the mystery of the day to day functioning, your mind begins to wander into the innovations in your working. This is how I bumped into the idea of criminal policing and social policing.”
“In the area of social policing, family disputes and marital disputes does not require either police or court intervention. The joint family setup was the panacea. We lost it in the run to materialism. So I tried to restore it. Collected the doctors and teachers and lawyers of the society and asked them to spare a day for us. We ensured the warring sides of the family are put together before them and asked them to solve their problem like a joint family would,” he adds.
Take the case of 25-year-old Rashmi Sharma. It was a complex case of her alleging that her one-and-a-half year old daughter Gungun’s father is her brother-in law Virender and that her husband Rajesh is having an affair with Preeti, Virender’s wife. Rashmi came to the police alleging that Virender has now stopped giving money to her for the upkeep of the baby. According to Rashmi, she was having affair with Virender for the past three years and he was running both the household, since Rashmi’s husband was a drunkard and unemployed. A complex case and it would have taken years for the judgement to pass, had they gone to the court.
The case was handled by Madhu Aggarwal, a municipal corporator and lady police officers of the district and finally the matter was settled by asking the four brothers to jointly take responsibility of the baby and deposit Rs 1,000 every month in her account for the next 18 years. Although not an easy job, after much trials and tribulations this was done. Says, Madhu Aggarwal, “Although it is not an easy job, still we are able to resolve cases in maximum four sittings. That’s the benchmark. If it takes more, then obviously the matter is resolved in courts.”
Pawan Mishra, a youth leader in Bareilly, who is also involved with then project says, “This project has tremendous social implications. Most of the crime incidents happen when there is infighting among the family members. Court cases keep on lingering the family disputes and anything can happen during the heat of the moment. A rapid and out of court settlement helps bridge the gap and thus the crime rate comes down. This also saves them from the fleecing advocates and relieves the judiciary from the extra burden of cases.”
Mishra feels that this exercise also helps in connecting the leaders as well as police to the mass. Jawahar Sinha, a lecturer in Bareilly College, who says, “In three years we have received about 2,300 family disputes and we have settled almost 1,500 such cases. Everyday the police receive applications and it is compiled and then passed on to us on Saturdays by the police. We have an office in police lines and every Saturday we sit and review these cases and conduct hearings. We have divided 12 counsellors into four groups and each group looks into a case.”
Regarding cases, most of them are related to dowry. 62-year-old Surjit Singh, a businessman by profession feels that his degree is law is now coming to use. His knowledge of the law, although unutilized till now, helps him to resolve cases. He says, “Till now I have resolved 60 cases successfully relating to dowry. Among the dowry applications, only 20 per cent are genuine. Rest 80 per cent were just to put pressure on the groom side to take better care of their daughters,” he adds.
Qamar Akhtar, a hotelier in Bareilly citing a case says, “15 days back we resolved a case in which a young couple were having marital problems only because of ego problems of their parents. This was a no case, but life for Deepesh and Neha was hell and that too it was an arranged marriage.”
25-year-old Deepesh Saksena, a junior engineer in the hydel project in Bareilly married Neha four months back. “Although we liked each other, but there was a continuous misunderstanding between our parents. So for four months it was hell. Due to the ego problems of our parents we were made to suffer,” he adds. His wife Neha, however, is now relieved after this ordeal ended. “Thank god that we had a quick hearing and the matter was solved out of court only. Otherwise it’s very difficult for ladies going to the court thousand people are looking at you. In courts, everything is in the open, but here one gets a bit of privacy also,” adds 23-year-old Neha.
Social worker Pawan Kumar Aggarwal feels, “It’s very difficult for a lady to go to the court. You are a centre of attraction there. Moreover, kind of money people spend in court cases is a lot and even worthless. Only advocates have the last laugh here. And in court one has to give proofs and a lot depends on the integrity of the lawyer too. And we don’t give judgements in cases, we give them the solutions, if the feuding parties accept, it is well and good otherwise we ask the police to register cases and then the matter is goes to court.”
Swarup although feels, “In both my previous postings (Etah and Ferozabad), criminal policing project was the first thing that I undertook. Since Bareilly sees more of family dispute and crime is only limited to certain pockets so I focused on Project Didi here first. It is running smoothly and successfully now, so I am turning towards criminal policing now.”

Set a thief to catch a thief

Gone are the days when robbers used to loot the area in the garb of the policemen. It’s just the opposite now. Robbers will be donning the Khakis to patrol the criminal-infested areas of Bareilly district and few would even become crime counselors for the police at the scene of crime.
This can be the changing face of police patrolling in the country. Call it reformative policing or just another innovative idea in the field of policing, but Bareilly is all geared up for this. Brainchild of UP’s firebrand IPS officer Anand Swarup, presently Senior Superintendent of Police, Bareilly, this experiment has given him tremendous results in terms of curbing crime and helping criminals of the past join the mainstream.
“I implemented this for the first time when I was SSP in Etah in 2004 and carried forward this legacy in Firozabad in 2005,” says Swarup, who has seen 31 transfers in his 12 year career and also holds the reputation of being an ‘encounter specialist’.
“We have already identified parts of Bareilly district, where this will be implemented. This helps petty criminals earning their livelihood through fairer means and even police can use the expertise of history-sheeters of the past to track the criminals,” he adds.
Swarup says, someone who has done crime in the past knows how the crime is committed. As police officers we can only guess and investigate, but they can actually guide you to the criminal. My idea was to use their expertise.
It was in 2004 in Etah, when Swarup first implemented this. He divided the area in a cluster of 50 shops each and assigned a criminal to patrol the area for eight hours and gave him a beat book. In return each shopkeeper had to pay Rs 50 a month, which amounted to Rs 2500 collectively, as monthly salary to the criminal. His work was reviewed jointly by the police and the employers (50 shop owners) on a monthly basis. This option of patrolling was not only given to criminals but to unemployed youth as well. For the first time when he called history-sheeters for a meeting, out of 500, only 100 turned up. Initial hesitation was there and Swarup too faced the ire of the senior bosses as his idea was termed as ‘maverick’ by them.
“It was a daring task as it could have had bad pitfalls and I was keeping faith on criminals. But one has to be innovative and I took the risk. In India, policing is all about catching criminals randomly in order to solve cases. But the conventional method of tracking the actual criminals from the crime scene is a passé. With the help of these crime counselors, we were able to solve cases easily and catch the real culprits,” he says.
Regarding the selection of criminals to do the right job, he says, “There are three types of criminals or HS (history-sheeters). The first is one who has a history of doing petty crimes (HS-A), second is one who commits petty crimes and is still active (HS-A*) and third habitual offenders who are into more serious crimes (HS-B). We selected people having no crime record for the past five years or more of HS-B category and having a likelihood of improvement and HS-A.”
It brought immediate results as the first experiment that took in Jalesar in Etah, saw theft cases stop in the first month itself. Incidents of house trespassing came down tremendously and crime chart dipped to a new low in comparison to the records of past five years.
Seeing the success rate, other clusters who were skeptical about the project also came forward to adopt the scheme. Regarding solving a case of crime, Swarup remembers that a former robber was instrumental in solving a case of a big robbery and looting in the area. “He gave us such vital clues that we busted an entirely new gang of young criminals having no past criminal record and who were in the job for quite sometime. Earlier, what used to happen was, police would round up other criminals with similar past crime records and arrest them for the crime committed. Cases of false implication were rampant. For these criminals too who were falsely implicated, more cases, irrespective whether they committed or not, meant enhancing their reputation and building fear factor among public.
“Thus newer gangs keep on committing crimes and live a life of anonymity and police doesn’t even know about it. Busting of newer gangs also acted as a deterrent for amateurs wanting to enter the world of crime. Also instances of a particular crime pattern stopped when newer gangs were busted.”
This also improved the relationship between past history-sheeters and the police as well as their village neighbours. They also acted as informers. Although, according to him, the system of mukhbir or informer is still prevalent in UP but they have become politicians and influential people in the society. They only keep in touch with the senior district police officials and don’t go to the thana, where they are supposed to share information. It is much of a status symbol than what it was actually meant to be – help police in nabbing criminals and continuous flow of information at the thana level.
These ‘reformed’ criminals were also given law and order duties. “In fact they participated in the Republic Day parade in Etah and took an oath never to commit a crime again,” adds Swarup.
Another factor that helped these criminals to join the mainstream was deleting their history sheets. According to the provisions in the law, once a history sheet is opened, it can only be deleted once a history-sheeter dies or he hasn’t committed a single crime in 30 years. But until the time they have history sheets, the criminals have to constantly go to the police stations for review. But there’s another provision in the law which states that if the SSP is convinced that an HS has reformed, his history-sheet can be deleted.
“I tore down the history-sheets of 14 in Etah and 30 in Firozabad in front of other history-sheeters. Being a history-sheeter has its own social implications in villages and there’s also a stigma attached to it. Seeing this, other history-sheeters too got inspired to join the mainstream,” he adds.
However, Swarup’s idea was put in the bin once he moved out of these districts as “it needs a tremendous amount of responsibility and nobody wants to risk his job”. A district posting anywhere in country is considered a plum posting and a small mistake can cost you the job and one can easily be shunted out to an insensitive post. So none dared to implement this.
As far as Bareilly is considered, Swarup is just two months old here. “Instances of crime are lesser than Etah and Firozabad. So I launched Project Didi first and now I am about to kick-start my pet project here,” Swarup adds. Pockets have been identified and scrutiny of the criminal records is going on. The out-of-the-box ‘meeting’ of history-sheeters and the police is just a step away.
Welcome to the world of criminal patrolling!