Making of a Criminal

This happened some 15 or so years ago. My neighbours had a watchman, presumably one of those young men from a village who came to the city in search of a better life. Like millions of other nameless men in this vast country. In fact, I didn't even know his name or get to know him during his brief tenure. The man had his meagre possessions in the garage and this is where he practically lived.

The man who owned the house had rented it out to a senior executive of a software firm and his family of wife and a small child. They were from N.India and didn't speak Tamil. The watchman, appointed by the landlord, knew no other language than Tamil.

There was an arrangement where the landlord's supervisor collected the rent and the watchman's salary from the tenant and in turn paid the watchman. Only problem was, this was never on time. The watchman was a taciturn fellow. He hardly spoke to too many people. But when he did speak to a few, he was heard complaining about the work timings and work conditions, and specifically about the delay in getting his wages which was paid as late as middle of the month or even later. One guesses that he came from a decent, although, poor family and I remember him to be quite a dignified man, quite unlike the kinds you see in the cities. He was unused to borrowing money and being a proud chap, went hungry, I was told, quite often, living practically on tea and biscuits while he waited for the supervisor to pay him. Which was, like I mentioned earlier, pretty erratic. (A lot of this information I got to know much later.)

One morning, I woke up to find some commotion in the neighbour's house. I knew they were away on a brief holiday and was surprised to find cops outside the house. There had apparently been a break-in and the watchman was missing. So were some jewels, cash and other valuables. The police took the fingerprints, registered the case and started the investigation.

Meanwhile, out of the blue, a couple of days later, the watchman returned! The police were summoned and he was questioned. The watchman said some men came in an autorickshaw late in the night of the robbery, threatened him at knife-point and robbed the house. He said, they then made him accompany them to the outskirts of the city and boarded a train and dropped him off several kilometres from the city. Since he didn't have any money he basically walked/hitchhiked his way back and hence the delay of 2 days!

The average Indian policeman, protected by the weak human rights laws that prevail in this country, of course has a way of treating people from the poorer sections of the society. They didn't believe his story and got a confession out of him after, I am sure, beating him black and blue. I heard that the fingerprints in the scene of the crime matched with his. Don't know about the jewels, cash etc., but I think they managed to get some back. Sure enough, they threw him jail and that was practically, it. No news about him thereafter and everyone involved in the incident went back to leading their normal lives.

But the irony is this. The chap was not a criminal to start with. He had no prior criminal record and was just a decent, but impoverished man, chasing a dream and a job who came to live in the city. He certainly did not take up a job as watchman so he could rob houses where he worked! As is evident, he did not have it in him to pull off a slick heist, and predictably enough he panicked after the enormity of his act dawned on him and returned hoping he could spin a fantastic yarn and get away with it. Of course, now he had a criminal record and whether he liked it or not, the society would treat him as such however hard he tried to, to use an old phrase, turn into a new leaf!

Driven by hunger and injustice thousands of people commit crimes in the heat of the moment, that they normally regret later. This man was one of them. Whose fault is it that he became a criminal?