Chetan Mahajan - The Bad Boys of Bokaro Jail

By definition, I guess I am an overgrown yuppie. 42 years old. Two MBAs: one from India and one from the US. Lived in the US for seven years. Big house in a big city, working for a listed company for a hefty salary. Gorgeous, highly educated wife. Two amazingly cute, loving kids. Two dogs. Two cars.

Today I have been taken to the police station and detained for 24 hours. The accusation is one of fraud (sections 420, 406 and 34) against Everonn, my employer whom I joined less than three months ago. Being the seniormost employee physically present I am the one who has been arrested. And why was I arrested? Well, we (my employer and I) are in the education business, and we have an IIT entrance coaching chain called Toppers which has a strong presence in Bokaro City. However, it has been short of funds and compromises have been made in the quality of what we deliver. A few of our employees have defected to competition without any intimation to us. We arranged for continuation of services very quickly with manpower we had sourced from elsewhere. My visit to Bokaro was supposed to be a short two-day affair to reassure our customers that nothing has changed and that all our commitments would be met.

What I did not know is that a couple of similar businesses in the same line of work have shut down in the past two years, and many of those customers lost all their money. I had one session with our customers on day one (22 December) and that went okay. But today a few customers (parents) became adamant and demanded an instant refund. With the earlier shutdowns in the background, they are not willing to take anyones word on anything. However, a refund decision is not one I can take independently. Today is a Sunday and my superiors in the company are hard to reach. Even with the required approvals, there is no way I can arrange such refunds instantly. Not satisfied with my response, the parents call the police. The cops arrive with a very clear assumption of guilty until proven innocent. In fact SHO Surinder Singh himself makes a statementthat, too, in front of all the parentsthat our institute would be shut down. That does not help.

A few parents file a police complaint. I am taken from the office to the police station. The SHO tells me I have 24 hours to pacify the customers (students and their parents) or I will be arrested. During these 24 hours I cannot leave the police station. No papers are shown to me. No rights read out. No grounds for the detention are given.

I repeatedly explain that I am just an employee, and that I had recently joined the company. Neither have I collected any money, nor am I authorized to distribute it. But all my pleas mean nothing. Someone needs to be hung, and I am conveniently available.

This was a situation I had not even dreamed of two days ago. I had joined Everonn on 3 October with stars in my eyes. I was being brought in to run virtually half the company. The company itself was going through a bad patch. The founder and erstwhile CEO had been arrested for tax evasion and imprisoned over one year back, and ever since then the whole company seems to have been coming apart. Then late last year the Gems group of Dubaia large conglomerate from the Middle East that owns a very successful chain of schools therehad bought the company, and effectively taken control. However, while they had bought the company, they had left the old management in control, and so while the company now had access to funds it still had not changed to become a well-run, profitable business. Almost a year had gone by, but nothing substantial had changed on the ground. It was only in September that they finally seemed to have realized that a change in results would require a new leadership. To bring about this change they had brought on board one of the most respected professionals of the education industry as an advisor. This gentleman knew me well, and had reached out to me to be part of the new leadership at the company.