Bharti Airtel and our over enthusiastic Pune police must have got a nasty shock when they were slapped with a 10-page legal notice for Rs.20 crore in damages by a techie from Bangalore.

Towards the end of last year, a software engineer from Bangalore, Lakshmana Kailash K, was arrested by the cyber crime cell of Pune police, on charges of posting unseemly pictures of Shivaji on Orkut. Apparently, his personal information as well as IP address were given to the cops by Bharti Airtel (his ISP). Our normally lethargic cops proceeded to arrest him immediately and even jailed him without any recourse to legal assistance.

As it turned out, someone made a big mistake (both Bharti and the cops are at loggerheads on this), but by that time, Lakshmana had spent 50 days in Yerwada jail in horrible circumstances, with regular beatings and being made to use the same bowl for eating, as well as his toilet needs.