Where is the Chowkidar when you need him?

Knife at his throat, surrounded by a gang of drunken hooigans,  ordering him to place a call to his wife and bring the ransom money. Him pleading for his life, unable to comprehend how and why his own business partner would have plotted against him, and kidnapped him for ransom. 

This is not an opening scene of a Hollywood/Bollywood thriller. This is what an Engineer turned Entrepreneur L N Bansal actually went through three years ago, while visiting the site of his new project.  And yes, the kidnapper was none other than his business partner. 

 Looking back now, to Bansal,  the incident was akin to mob lynching, and has left behind a trail of unspeakable trauma. It is hardly a wonder that even after all these years,  there are  nights, when he  wakes up sweating, revisited by the ghost of that living nightmare. 

However, what Bansal fails to understand is the reason which propelled his partner to inflict such an heinous act of violence upon him.  For the project was in full-swing, the demand for the product was high, and he had been more than fair to  in his business dealings. Moreover,  the project was credited with introducing a source of income for the cotton farmers of the region in the off-season. All they had to do was to merely  sell their agri-waste to his unit so that it could be converted into briquettes to replace the need for fossil fuel. 

L N Bansal, an alumni of IIT Kanpur, an erstwhile vice chairman of Kirloskar, and more recently, a self-employed entrepreneur, based in Hyderabad, has been working in the field of alternative energy for more than a decade now. 

He, and his dedicated team of professionals at the Banyan Tree  have successfully carried out several environment related innovative projects, right from the planning stage to their execution. This one, on the border of Karnataka and AP, was just one such project, and promising in every way. Who would have thought that a simple official visit would turn into such a nerve-wracking ordeal? But, when it did, there was no one to turn to.  The officers at the police station where the incident took place not only said it didn't fall under their jurisdiction for the victim was not from the area, but also discouraged him to undertake such projects.  "Why do you want to save the environment?...Save yourself first," one of them remarked with a smirk. 

The police from his own area also refused to help, for the episode had occurred in a village outside their domain of authority. A couple of journalists, known personally to Bansal covered the story. One such article, penned in Hindi, was published in a weekly magazine called, 546,  meant only for the members of the parliament. Yet, even after the article was published, not one MLA, nor MP made a phone call to the victim, or extended any kind of help.

It stands to reason that the project, which held so much potential not only for the investors and the local people, but also for the future of alternative energy sources, just folded up. And worse still, no one could do anything.

In this day and age, where the average citizen is under constant surveillance, where sometimes a person can get penalized  merely for posting a comment on social media, the real offenders roam free, curling their big handlebar moustaches... machete in hand...

...just like in the movies.