No, this isn’t about SRK’s son, really

An upscale fourlane flyover recently came up in Chunabhatti so that you can glide over drainage for Mithi river connecting directly to Mumbairsquos swanky office districtmdashBandraKurla Complex BKC Soon as we started taking this aerial route we realised a curious trap had been set around the flyoverrsquos BKC landingWith juvenile delinquents in fancydress clothes hiding at the bend Only this bunch were adults in actual traffic cop uniforms heroically startling you with a ldquogotchadhappardquomdashif you were on a bikeBecause Bikes arenrsquot allowed on the stretch Although they are on both ends where the flyover takes off This gamersquos been going on because thatrsquos what bad laws do They incentivise enforcers to get lazymdashsimply stand in a corner phadoing receipts for relatively lowlevel offences that anyway donrsquot make much senseEasy peasy And they are upholding the law As were the lot most enthusiastically fining drivers alone in a car without a mask on during COVID19mdasheven when the damn carrsquos the mask if yoursquore alone noNever mind if the intent matches the outcome or if the two are even related or that some laws are simply irrelevantarchaic The issue goes beyond the flyover cowboys when the point of a lawrsquos continuous existence is to leave a fat hole either for the enforcerrsquos moodinterpretation or timed harassmentItrsquos there because itrsquos there Just so they can catch lowhanging fruits with it As against hardenedorganised criminals that are more dangerous to chase and nab Even better if those laws make the transient political masters potentially triggerhappy Or maybe that is the pointThis can range from the colonial sedition laws so easily applied to postcollegetype kids passionate activistsmdashfighting against other bad laws but deemed to be warring against their own homeland apparently Or it could be about hotels Sarai Act 1867 where you can book owners if they didnrsquot serve you water Google Indiarsquos lsquobad lawsrsquo the list is quite exhaustingTake the Bombay Prohibition Act 1949 While prohibitionrsquos been effectively lifted in Maharashtra one ACPrank policeman in the employ Dhoble can evidently wield hockey sticks with it travelling with video cameras ramming through FampB establishments in the city detaining harmless customers booking ownersmdashincluding a woman who once mixed liquor in her chocolate at homeWhy Because Dhoble felt like it in 2012 Now we know his name He was simply doing his job No one since has as brainlessly bothered But the law itself consumer licences permit room segregation etc persists It simply depends on whorsquos implementing wherefrom flows power Similar harassments continue merely the sites change most remain unreported Who benefits Good questionWas the fact of 23 Narcotics Control Bureau NCB men deployed to eye a party cruise liner on October 2 that became national news similar Oh no itrsquos seemingly more personalmurky As six of Indiarsquos Narcos spent R48 lakh for cruise tickets and returned with a drug haul of R1 lakh and changeThe Pablo Escobars they nabbed were a bunch of rando young adults on a weekend trip paraded before television paparazzi presumably invited by NCB itself They let the actual cruise party continue Irsquom toldThis massive operation involved toplevel detective types posing as cops who turned out to be slightly shady men in their intentions Now therersquos back and forth over who allegedly wanted what from a subsequent money dealldquoWersquore informersrdquo they told national TV cameras Which is strange as BV Kumar former NCB chief says ldquoWhich informer will tell the whole world that hersquos one Will get bumped off by the crimedrug syndicate nordquoAmong the young accused was the son of Shah Rukh Khanmdashan actor who first became a Bollywood hero with a film called Deewana 1992 which originally starred Armaan Kohli hersquos there in the poster Wherersquos Armaan Kohli In Arthur Road Jail since Augustend They found 12 grams of cocaine on him ldquosmall quantityrdquo according to law is 2 gramsThe Dhoblelike man similarly implicating actors like Rhea Chakraborty Ajaz Khan summoning Deepika Padukone Rakul Preet Singh etc is the regional NCB boss Sameer Wankhede The basis is often WhatsApp messagesmdashbasically barging into a personrsquos most private premisesmdashinterpreting what one likes without permission or contextHerersquos why this isnrsquot about SRKrsquos son We should be more worried for regular Rameshes whose lives cameras donrsquot follow And why Sameerrsquos the symptomLook at the NDPS Act imposed on India by the American government in 1985mdashwhile nothing as draconian exists in America This Indian Act like the contentiousmisused dowry legislation upturns the idea of law itself when human rights seem like privilege and jail as against bail the normmdashpresuming guilt until proven innocentThere is hardly a distinction made between sadhu smuggler and syndicate let alone recreational user and abusermdashnone even between drugs herbal and chemical No privacy guaranteed against public shameUnsurprisingly around 98 per cent of drugrelated cases in Maharashtra in 2017 and 2018 concerned people with casual quantities found on them Those were the enforcers solving Mumbairsquos traffic problems playing tag behind BKC flyover If these are the priorities for curbing a 650billion global drug trade honestly lage gaye lawMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper