A man in Pune built a following by filming potholes.
He drove around the city with a camera, showing broken roads, damaged footpaths, and cars with illegal number plates. People watched because they recognised their own streets.
On 3rd September, at about 1 in the morning, the police came to his house and arrested him.
His name is Santosh Pandit.
He lives in Kothrud in Pune. He is a social media creator and civic activist. His videos question the quality of municipal work in the city and ask why it has not been fixed.
He is now in Yerawada Central Jail. On 8th September a court remanded him to judicial custody until 21st September.
Here is exactly what he is accused of, because this matters.
He was not arrested over the potholes.
The first complaint was filed on 31st August by a corporator. A second was filed at Kothrud police station by a 36 year old sanitation worker employed by the Pune Municipal Corporation.
The complaints allege that in some of his videos he used obscene, sexually coloured, abusive and defamatory language while attacking a state cabinet minister, a woman corporator and the Chief Minister.
He has been booked under several sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and under Section 67 of the Information Technology Act.
Those are allegations. No court has decided them. He has not been convicted of anything.
Now the part that has caused the argument.
The second complaint was filed, and he was arrested at around 1 am the same night. Police then told the court he had 4 cases registered against him across different police stations, described him as a frequent offender, and said that if released he might upload similar content again and disturb public peace.
The Wire has reported a comparison that is hard to ignore. In the same state, 13 of the 39 ministers in the government face serious criminal charges. One minister alone has 38 first information reports registered against him.
None of them were collected from their homes at 1 in the morning.
That is the whole issue, and it is worth separating carefully.
Whether Santosh Pandit crossed a line is a question for a court. If a man used sexually coloured language about a woman corporator, a complaint is legitimate and the law should take its course.
The separate question is about speed.
An ordinary citizen's complaint about a minister can sit for years. A minister's associate files a complaint about a citizen and the arrest happens within hours, at night.
The same police, the same state, the same law.
He will be in Yerawada until at least the 21st.
"5 किलो राशन तो दे रहे हो लेकिन नमक, मिर्च, मसाले, चीनी, चायपत्ती, तेल, तंबाकू कौन देगा?"
देवबंद के मोहम्मद मुर्सलीन ने PM मोदी और CM योगी से की अनोखी डिमांड, देखिए @Keshavmalan93 की ग्राउंड रिपोर्ट
An Indian woman tried to pay her hotel bill in Rotterdam. The card was declined.
She had enough money in the account. The bank had made an error.
Players from other countries were standing there. Some of them made remarks. Not just about whether she could pay, but about India.
Her name is Dipika Pallikal.
She is one of the best squash players India has produced, and an Arjuna Award winner. She was in the Netherlands in 2011 for a tournament.
At the hotel, her Axis Bank debit card would not go through.
There was nothing wrong with her account. There was enough balance in it. The failure was at the bank's end.
But nobody standing in a hotel lobby can see that. All anyone sees is a young Indian sportswoman whose card has been refused.
She had a second card from another bank. She used that and paid.
That should have been the end of an embarrassing evening.
Then the money went missing.
The transaction had failed, but the amount was still taken from her account, and Axis Bank did not put it back.
Most people would have made calls, got nowhere, got tired, and written it off as a lesson.
She filed a case in a consumer court in Chennai.
Her complaint was not really about the money. It was about humiliation and loss of reputation. She had been made to look, in front of international competitors, like someone who could not pay her own hotel bill.
The case took about 3 years.
On 24th March 2014, the consumer court held Axis Bank responsible for deficiency in service. It ordered the bank to pay her 5 lakh rupees in compensation, and another 5,000 rupees towards her costs.
Here is why this case is worth knowing about, even if you will never play squash for India.
A bank failing your card is not treated in law as bad luck or a technical glitch. It is treated as a service you paid for, delivered badly.
And the damage the law recognised was not the amount of the bill. It was what happened to her standing in that room, in front of those people.
Your reputation is something a court can put a number on.
Hers came to 5 lakh rupees.
The Indian courts simply do not get this: that millions of Muslims who pour on to the streets demanding Sar Tan Se Juda are merely following the fundamentals. They are not mad. They are not terrorists. They are not fanatics. They are law-abiding. Their law is Sharia.
My views:
ये सब ठीक हो सकता है जब कारवाही उन "किताबो" पर होगी जो बचपन से इन्हें पढ़ाई जाती है
प्रॉब्लम इनकी किताबो में और मदरसा सिलेबस में है
यही आगे जाकर छांगुर बाबा और Burhan Wani बनते हैं
@amzng_deals Why are the images blowed up beyond relative sizes - a 20x20 would fit on the shirt, but not the way you projected on the wall. The dimensions should be at least 50x50 above a shelf on the wall. Totally #Misleading
Shame on NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani for supporting Terrorist. @NYCMayor stands in opposition to the RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat @RSSorg who has done so much humanitarian work. Stay safe in NYC my Jewish brothers and sisters. Hindus & Christians too with this Jihadist Zohran. What a logic....you are stupid Zohran and a hypocrite.
Aise banega tumhara Rahul Gandhi future PM of India ??? By offering influencers ₹25,000 to attend Chhatro ki Gunj event on 22th August ??
Rhea Khanolkar discloses that she got a call to attend the Chhatro ki Gunj event organised by the Congress Party and to interact with Rahul Gandhi on stage, post 2 or 3 videos from her own handle and highlight the event.
She was offered ₹25,000 for this meet and greet event posing as a student. She explains the whole process.
This bar dancer Anjali Arora has been framed as the pious Sita Maa in Bollywood movie Mahakavya Shri Ramayan Katha – Shri Ram Ki.
Can someone tell the director Abhishek Singh that he couldn’t find a single decent Indian girl who doesn’t drink and twerk her ass like her to play the role of Maa Sita?
Hindus it's high time to boycott this movie 🙏
🚨CONTROVERSY: Sonia Gandhi Appears to Object to “Vande Mataram”
A video purportedly shows Sonia Gandhi gesturing to Congress workers to stop while Vande Mataram was being played.