Narayana Swamy
Daijiworld Media Network
Bangalore, Feb 1: Quite often we hear of 'rowdies' being used by credit card companies and banks for recovering their outstanding loans. The method is quite common in India. This last resort used by lenders to recover dues has quite a few times hit headlines, and become a matter of debate too.
But here is a leading private telephone service provider's executive, who not only threatened to kill a civil court judge, but even abused him with foul language in a bid to collect a pending bill amount.
Anekal's chief civil judge G Ragavendra's wife had a telephone connection, but her phone was disconnected sometime during May 2010. After about couple of months, a person by the name of 'Raj' called Justice Ragavendra from mobile number 9945119298 and asked him to pay the pending bills. Unaware of any outstanding bill, Justice Ragavendra asked 'Raj' to send a copy of the bill to his address and said that he would pay the amount accordingly.
The same person called him again on August 14, 2010 from a different mobile number (9632175572) and told him that he would not send any notice or bill, but send only a company representative to whom he should pay the money. He is said to have even hurled verbal abuses at Justice Ragavendra. Annoyed by the foul language, Justice Ragavendra told him that he was a civil court judge and requested him to talk with respect and manners. But 'Raj' kept on abusing him, threatening to kill him, saying, "Whatever you are, I do not care...you pay my money". Disappointed and angry at such behaviour, Justice Ragavendra disconnected the call. But the same person called him on his landline number, and again threatened to send rowdies to collect the money.
Having noted down his mobile numbers, Justice Ragavendra filed a complaint with the police, and found that the person who called in the name of 'Raj' was Peter Solomon, working for Airtel company as a bill collection executive.
However, the police, though they interrogated the accused, could not arrest him immediately. He was arrested only on Jan 23, 2012 ! (Case number 195/2010, section 504-505).
But here is the interesting part. For Solomon's bad luck, the case is now in court, and under the jurisdiction of none but Justice Ragavendra, who would be hearing the case himself!
Raj alias Solomon would never have imagined that the person he abused and threatened to kill would be the person passing the judgement too!
Justice Ragevendra sent him to jail for five days. And most interestingly, as the case is eligible for bail, on a humanitarian ground without harbouring grudge against Solomon, Justice Ragevendra granted him bail too!