All for Rs. 220

Sonia Faleiro, a popular Indian blogger writes here about an incident with a Taxi Driver. The guy apparently over charged her (ie charged her Rs. 380 when the usual fare is Rs. 160). Ms. Faleiro apprehended the driver in her building complex and along with another individual (who was 'brawnier than her') she forcibly searched him and his taxi, extracting sets of papers that apparently proved that he had three different rate sheets (a ratesheet is the physical proof of the taxi fare per distance). During her interrogation she figures that the driver is stoned and also proceeds to take a picture of him in her digital camera (which she has trumphantly put up in her blog) . She then apprently tried calling the police but couldn't reach them, so she detained the taxi driver for an hour ( to 'let him stew') inside her complex and then let him go.

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Was this a triumphant heroine discharging justice where justice was due? Or is this her version of vigilante law?

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Would she do the same to any other corrupt person she meets? A minister? A government official? A cop perhaps? Or wait, does the fact that the taxi driver was a harmless junkie have anything to do with this?

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In one post in Ms. Faleiro's blog (where she writes about her Hurricane experience in Mumbai), she is cooped in the lobby of a five star hotel (I forget the name and I'm too lazy to hunt for that post). She apparently asked them for a room and was told that only rooms with a tariff of Rs. 10,000/- was available (a popular gimmick with 5 star hotels during excessive demand is to book all the expensive rooms before they let out the cheaper rooms). Why didn't she apply the same treatment given to the taxi driver & shake that reception clerk and check if this information was real. Whatever happened to her sense of fair play then?

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Does she think what she did was legal? Isn't detaining a man and injuring him (she says a finger was cut, I hope that was a small cut, in her own words ' a thumb was cut, but not off') as illegal as over-charging in a taxi?

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What of the taxi driver's legal rights? What would have happened if in the scuffle to search his taxi, he was seriously injured? Whatever happened to taking the taxi number down and then reporting the matter to the police in a formal manner?

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If Ms. Faleiro took a picture of the guy, then wasn't this a blog post happening in Ms. Faleiro's mind as she dealt with him? (More dramatic the better right?)

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Is this a question of a blogger abusing someone and orchestrating news? I let you decide for yourself. Now don't get me wrong, I admire Ms. Faleiro's writing and I have nothing against her but my opinion is that it is one thing is to handle a situation wrongly but to gloat over it is a whole different kettle of fish. Whatever it was, I'm quite sure if this was any other country with a stronger legal system, Ms. Faleiro would have been arrested for assault & illegal detention. But here in India, who gives a shit about the rights of a junkie taxi driver, right?

UPDATE: I wrote to Ms. Faleiro asking her about this. Till date I have not had a response from her. Further, there was an 'anonymous' comment in her post that said that Ms. Faleiro's action was correct since detaining a guy who was high for an hour would have saved 'pregnant women and school children' in the roads. I replied that there was nothing in the post that wrote about the way that guy drove his car (he would have to have driven her for more than 45 minutes for her to pay Rs. 180), all Ms. Faleiro said was that since he had a glazed look he probably was stoned(when she was interrogating him), thats it. I don't think Ms. Faleiro's actions were due to the assumption that he was stoned . All I can see is that Ms. Faleiro saw the police deal with a similar incident of meter rigging one time before (she wrote about it in a previous post) and thought, hey, I can do this! Thats what is wrong Ms. Faleiro.

Anyway my comment was not allowed on the post by Ms. Faleiro since in her blog she has to review comments before they appear on the post, subsequent comments from others have been included.

Fancily enough, I wrote about this to a fellow blogger from Mumbai, who knew Sonia Faleiro and nominated her for the IndiBlog, he hasn't replied in a week either. Small world, small people.