When the rule of law offers no respite

Coming back to India after a two-year absence felt like a holiday. It was a respite from the kinds of places I normally travel to; a chance to be somewhere safe and welcoming, among like-minded people. My work is controversial and politically charged, as it highlights how corruption and incompetence prevents governments from providing quality education for the poor. Government officials, not surprisingly, are often unsympathetic, and international aid organizations tend to be antagonistic. But this week, in Hyderabad, I planned to relax among old friends.

Andrew Coulson had booked me into a swish hotel— the Park Hyatt in Banjara Hills, one of the most luxurious in Hyderabad. Normally I stay in very simple places, but I can tolerate opulence if others are paying. I was joined at the Hyatt by Sara and my niece, Alissa, who had been staying with Sara’s family in the east of India for a few months during her gap year between school and university.

Sara’s proper name is Saraswati, after the goddess of knowledge, music and nature. She lets me shorten it to Sara. She has dark eyes, flowing dark hair, and a glamorous, vivacious personality. Somewhat surprisingly to most people who see us together, and especially to myself, she is my girlfriend. For the few years I have known her, she has been living in India and running her family’s schools, while I have been teaching at a university in England. Long-distance relationships like these are hard to sustain. So it was particularly special for us to be together in Hyderabad, where we had first started seeing each other back in 2009, when I was more or less living there. Revisiting old haunts brought us closer together...

When everyone else had gone to bed, Sara, Alissa, and I stayed up talking and laughing late into the night. We were surrounded by the comfort of friends and family, and doing something meaningful, to boot. It was, Sara and I agreed, our happiest time together.

We finished filming the documentary on Thursday, 6 March 2014. Alissa was leaving that evening for Thailand, for the next leg of her gap-year trip. Sara had booked a long weekend in Goa for us, flying in early Friday morning. I seldom go on holiday because I tend to feel guilty about taking time off when there is so much work to be done, but I went along with it this time, for the sake of a peaceful existence. In any case, I reassured myself, it was only a short break before I travelled on to lecture in Delhi, then Dubai (sharing the platform with the former US president, Bill Clinton), and then on to Ghana and Sierra Leone to troubleshoot in the schools I was running, before heading back to Newcastle University and then on to America. Business as usual. When Thursday arrived, I was feeling uncharacteristically relaxed and rather looking forward to our break.

Around 5 p.m. on Thursday, after we had said goodbye to Alissa, I got a call from Mohammed, who runs schools in Hyderabad’s predominantly Muslim Old City. Someone from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) had been to visit, and asked where I was staying. She was on her way to see me.

‘Nothing to worry about, she’s kind,’ he said. ‘She just wants to clarify few issues.’

‘Which issues?’ I asked.

‘About the Educare Trust.’

‘Really?’

I wondered why that had come up again.

Reluctantly, I went down to wait for her. Five-star hotels tend to compete on how cold they can make their lobbies with air conditioning, so I took my jacket with me, with my passport in an inside pocket, and a notebook and pen in another. People are often late in Hyderabad, so I also took my copy of Gandhi: Naked Ambition, Jad Adams’s new biography of the leader, to read while I waited...

The investigators arrived at 7 p.m., a CID officer accompanied by her male assistant. She showed me her identification card, which read: ‘Mrs T Mantra, Deputy Superintendent, Criminal Investigation Department’. She was in her mid-forties and wore a sari of a dirty green shade (‘The colour of algae,’ Sara said later). Her thin hair was tied in a ponytail and she had on a pair of old-fashioned, gold-rimmed spectacles. She also wore a single gold bangle on each arm. Sara remarked later that the pallu of Mrs Mantra’s sari, which should be ideally pinned high on the shoulder, was draped so low that it often fell off her shoulder, ‘exposing too much’ (as Sara put it). I can’t say I noticed.

What I did notice, however, was her smile. It was wide, sweet, and friendly.

Mrs Mantra treated her junior colleague in the way many Indian officials treat their inferiors: with exasperation and impatience. I never got his name that night, nor during the whole period I knew him...

Mrs Mantra explained why she had come. The Educare Trust, which I had set up in 2002, may have received some foreign currency without the required approvals under the FCRA (Foreign Contribution Regulation Act). Yes, I knew this may have been a problem. Two years ago, when I was last in Hyderabad, someone from CID had asked me to visit Police Headquarters. I found a lawyer, Venu, on the recommendation of one of the junior managers at the Taj Banjara, a business hotel in the city. His advice was that the problem, if indeed there was a problem, was not serious. It had nothing to do with me anyway, as I was not involved in the day-to-day running of the Trust. The solution was simple: we should close the Trust down (its work in any case had ceased), and that would be the end of it. Having given a thorough statement to the police and closed the Trust, I had assumed I would hear no more of the matter. I told Mrs Mantra all of this.

‘Yes,’ she said, smiling sweetly. ‘But the officer you saw has retired. I’ve taken over his cases, but all his files are lost. Just make a statement again so that I can close the case.’

I explained that when I had made the earlier statement I had access to some Trust documents, kept in one of the schools. By now I had forgotten such details and was not sure whether I would be able to find the documents again.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Make a statement from memory. We just need something to close the case.’...

She asked me many questions about my work. Taking down the statement clearly bored her, and this seemed as good a subject as any to be diverted by. I told her I was a professor at Newcastle University. ‘A good university?’ she asked. Proudly, I told her it was a very good university, part of the Russell Group of elite research-based British universities. She seemed impressed, and began to rummage around in her bag to find a photograph of her son. She had two sons, she told me. The older one was doing an MBA at one of the elite management schools in India, but her younger son was floundering in an indifferent school.

‘He needs to go to a British university,’ she said.

‘That would be great,’ I replied.

‘A good British university will properly recognize his talents,’ she said.

‘I hope he finds one,’ I said.

‘One like yours,’ she said.

‘It’s a very good university,’ I agreed. ‘Anyway (trying to get her back on task, aware that Sara and Andrew had just gone upstairs to dinner), I’m professor there, but my work focuses on researching the education of low-income families, in countries like…’

I listed the countries. She turned back to her pinned-together pages, and laboriously wrote them all down.

‘Are you married?’ she asked, apropos of nothing.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Then you can marry me,’ she said matter-of-factly.

Flustered, I flunked my reply, making it seem that I was unduly interested in her personal life: ‘You’re Mrs Mantra, it says on your identity card, so how could I marry you?’

‘I’m a widow,’ she said, ‘with two sons who need a father.’

I was lost for words, but she saved me: ‘Don’t worry, I joke. In India, once we’re widowed we’re finished.’

It was after 9 p.m. I rushed upstairs to the restaurant, and ate a terrific farewell dinner with my wonderful friends, while being entertained by a jazz duo. I was in bed by 11.30 p.m., and fell into a deep sleep.

At 1 a.m., the hotel room phone rang.

‘The lady you spoke to this evening wants to have a word with you again,’ said the hotel’s duty manager.

I felt afraid immediately.

Mrs Mantra was there, at the head of a group of six men in a triangle behind her. Her smile was still broad. One of the men emerged from behind her, unsmiling, and said:

‘Mr James Nicholas, we are arresting you.’

Excerpted with permission from Speaking Tiger; Pages 258; ₹270