The past few weeks have seen a sudden flurry of activity centered around the open plots of land at Wanowrie ahead of Sacred Heart Town.

Spread over approximately 48 acres in three broad chunks, a part of the area has been used by people for walks and even the odd game of cricket / football. There is also a laughter club that meets here each morning.

Almost exactly a year ago, signs were put up all over the place, mentioning “Harshavardhan Group of Companies”, along with a shed for the security guards at various locations.

In all the time that the signs were there, nobody seemed to mind or even care about what exactly was going on or even about the activities planned by this group, and life went on merrily.

I remember there were some of us who discussed this and the potential implications if more concrete structures were to come up and destroy the serenity and peace that existed so far.

All of a sudden, a month or so ago, those ugly blue boards were put up around the land, indicating that some work was actually going to start. This finally seemed to shake people out of their lethargy and a lot of noises are now being made about the legality of the whole thing.

The Harshvardhan Group of Companies is planning a commercial-cum-residential project, allegedly without necessary sanctions, as it is a “Mahar watan land.”

A Mahar watan land is granted to people by the government and it cannot be sold without the permission of the divisional commissioner / district collector. This land has a current market valuation of nearly Rs.350 crore.

Last year, a stay order was passed rendering the agreement between the collector and the watandars null and void. It was also mentioned that no group can put up fences or show ownership of land until further orders. 

What gets me the most is that people chose to sleep over the matter for over a year, and have woken up only now, when likelihood of all that land being take over is a very realistic threat. If it was being taken over to create a proper park or a walking plaza / joggers park / something along those lines, I don’t think anyone would’ve objected.

However, the builder issued a public notice saying that he is using the land only for “agriculture purposes”, but has printed brochures with plans to develop the area under the name ‘Eledora’, with shopping malls, multiplex, restaurants, corporate park and a star hotel with exclusive apartment units.

There are anyway few open spaces left in the city, and I hope our “wise” city fathers realise the need to keep them as is, and not plonk more concrete monsters all over the place !

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Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors has been given the go-ahead by the Delhi High Court for public release. The film is a story of a 10-year-old boy who moves to England with his family and gets involved in a plan to save the world.

Warner Bros had sued the film makers, their contention being that the name was too phonetically and structurally similar to Harry Potter.

Justice Reva Khetrapal, in an interim order, said, “Harry Potter films are targeted to meet the entertainment needs of an elite and exclusive audience the cognoscenti-an audience that is able to discern the difference between a film based on a Harry Potter book on one hand and a film which is a Punjabi comedy on the other. In my view, the cognoscenti , the intellectuals and even the pseudo-intellectuals presumably know the difference between chalk and cheese or at any rate must be presumed to know the same.”

Originally set for a 12-Sep release, the movie is set to premiere this Friday.

The court also took issue with the fact that Warner Bros was aware of the title since 2005 but waited till the last moment after completion of the film and filed a case just before its release. Sounds like a familiar situation, right?

Yup, maybe Warner Bros was hoping to do what Ram Sampath did to the Roshans !!

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Well, in case we did not know the meaning of idiot, the Supreme Court has a new definition of the term.

The court was hearing a case from Madhya Pradesh where one Hari Singh Gond murdered his grandfather-in-law and then claimed innocence on the grounds of idiocy. Under Section 84 of the IPC (Indian Penal Code), a person is not liable to be prosecuted if found to be of unsound mind, or incapable of comprehending the nature of the criminal act and the fact that it is against the law.

To be legally accepted as an idiot, one has to be so dumb as to be unable to count till 20, list the days of the week, or fail to remember the names of one’s parents, the court said, while identifying four kinds of people who could be classified as mentally unsound – idiots, the very ill, lunatics and drunks.

Seems ok, doesn’t it? However, it’s too simplistic and there would be millions in India who would qualify as ‘idiots’, simply because they are illiterate (so they cannot count to 20 or list days of the week) or have never really needed to ‘know’ their parents’ names, beyond referring to them as Dad and Mom in their local lingo.

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An employment tribunal has awarded £30,000 as compensation to estate agent Julie-Anne Reed of Exeter, Devon after she was repeatedly criticised by her boss for her 36 DD chest size.

He is also alleged to have told her on several occasions to “either reduce the size of her breasts or get some new blouses.”, which induced bouts of depression and self conciousness, besides putting up with the continuous harassment. The Telegraph has more details on this.

In another case, a waitress, Jane Price, working at the Steak and Omelette bar in Plymouth, Devon, was awarded £60,000 as compensation after she was fired from her job for complaining about a breast groping drunken boss.

Looks like breasts are big news in the UK (or specifically Devon?) legal circles this month !!

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Former MP Madhukar Sarpotdar of the Shiv Sena was convicted for his role in the 1992-93 Mumbai riots case.

As expected, party patriarch Bal Thackeray immediately sprang to his defence, saying ‘Sarpotdar’s only crime was raising the Vande Mataram slogan, mainly to counter chants of ’Pakistan Zindabad’ by rioters.

Did he forget what else Sarpotdar did at the time ?

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If you happen to be the victim in a road accident, and are unable to get compensation as the culprit’s licence was fake, here’s some good news for you.

The Supreme Court has ruled that insurance companies cannot deny compensation to the victim on the grounds that a driver of an insured vehicle was carrying a fake licence.

A Bench comprising Justices S B Sinha and V S Sirpurkar said,

 ”Only because the driver possesses a fake licence, that would not absolve the insurer to reimburse the owner of the vehicle the amount awarded in favour of a third party by the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal. Alternatively, if the insurance company pays the third party claim to the victim or his kin, it would be at liberty to recover the same from the owner of the vehicle.”

A person travelling in a rickshaw was hit by a truck driver, who was carrying a fake licence, due to which the insurers, National Insurance Company  contested the claim by the victim’s family.

The Court ruled that there was a difference between an owner claiming damages to his vehicle, and compensation payable to a third party, so though the insurance company was not liable to pay for damages to the insured vehicle, it would have to compensate the victim. 

I’d like to add a point here: When people roam around freely with fake passports, a fake driving licence seems trivial in comparision. In the above case, for example, how would an employer (the truck owner) verify whether his employee (the driver) actually carries a genuine licence?

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The Supreme Court, in a landmark ruling, has said that Som Mittal, who is currently Chairman of NASSCOM, should be prosecuted for not taking measures to ensure the safety of employees while he was heading Hewlett Packard.

In December 2005, one of the employees, Pratibha Srikant Murthy was raped and murdered by a cab driver who was an employee of the taxi firm contracted by the company. Soon after, the Karnataka police had filed an FIR against Mittal, alleging that his company violated a State government order prohibiting night shift for women. Mittal, on his part, had challenged the dismissal of his petition by the Karnataka High Court against a case registered by the Karnataka government. At the time this happened, the official stance taken by HP was quite stand-offish, and they could definitely have shown a more caring attitude. 

However, this raises an interesting question: In future, in the event of ANY mishap, will the head of that company always be made the respondent in such cases ? While I feel HP could have handled the situation a lot better than it did at the time, I think a more deeper analysis needs to be done when it comes to fixing liability and criminal intent.

On the one hand, this could be a wake up call to all those heading their organizations that they could be held responsible for such lapses, making them tighten up procedures more. On the other hand, this could end up leading to harassment of CEOs, especially if they are required to make multiple appearances in court. Of course, if their complicity is proved (in cases like this one, or even those like sexual harassment, defrauding shareholders etc), then by all means, the law must take it’s course.

By the same logic, we could also have zillions of FIRs lodged against policemen and the military in this country, or for that matter even elected representatives like the PM, every time there is a terrorist attack in the country. After all, as Head of the Government of the day, the PM is responsible for the safety of every citizen in this country, and any such attack resulting in deaths of people means he has failed in his duty to protect them.

What do you feel ?

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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.

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In a much awaited and highly sensationalised judgement, Judge Kode handed down a six year RI sentence to actor Sanjay Dutt for illegal possession of weapons given to him by Dawood Ibrahim’s men in 1993. He was also fined Rs.25,000. His bail was immediately cancelled and the judge asked the cops to take him into custody.

This is something which a lot of people will have difficulty reconciling themselves to, most of all those around him, but having seen the methods and logic being applied by Judge Kode so far while handing out sentences, I think Dutt should have seen this coming.

Given the fact that 14 years have passed, people’s perceptions about Dutt have also changed and he’s much more popular now so I admire the judge for having the guts to hand down what will be largely perceived as a harsh sentence.

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Three journalists whose private phone records were scrutinized by investigators working for Hewlett-Packard intend to sue HP for invasion of privacy.

The dispute stems from an investigation of HP’s directors initiated under the company’s former chairwoman, Patricia Dunn. To try to uncover leaks from board members, private investigators examined the phone records of nine journalists who covered the company, as well as the records of some of their relatives.

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