Miss Laila, Armed and Dangerous

by Manu Joseph

Mukundan can see why the presence of the girl is a problem. The Bureau wishes to take Jamal to a safe house, get all the juice out of him, or flip him into an informer. What use are terrorists in prison? The Bureau can abduct shady men and keep them in illegal detention for months until they are of no use. Then they are handed over to formal custody. Sometimes they die. The Bureau is allowed to get away with that because there are things a nation must do. But it would be messy to abduct a young woman who is probably just another girl in the company of the wrong man in the wrong place. If she is left in the car, she would be a witness to the abduction. If she is abducted, she would have to be seriously implicated in terror or eliminated because illegal confinement of a woman is not the same as that of a man. There would be hell. And if the abduction does not go smoothly and there is a gun battle, a dead young Muslim girl would draw too much attention.

Absurdity and complications in national defence.