I knew a terrorist once. Well, not a convicted one, but a suspect. Suspect, not of terrorism, but of spreading a hoax. Nevertheless, it was a hoax that brought a city of c.10 million people into chaos for a day. It took months for the police to finally conclude that he had no involvement. I could have told them that on the same day. He was too thick to plot anything. 

I met him at a French course a few decades ago. I missed the first session, and on the second day, I met a fellow bunch of French enthusiasts, two school girls of about 14-15, a brother of one of them aged 10-11, a few others mostly in their twenties and within that merry lot was this mysterious guy. Mysterious because his motive seemed most bizarre and far-fetched. He wanted to go to Canada. He also wanted to do a double MBA. Each of his fingers adorned a ring with a gemstone, not for embellishment but clearly recommended by astrologers to help his stars. He spoke with great knowledge of the Canadian immigration system, as if he already had it, but was only inconvenienced by this requirement of knowledge of French. If you ask him a question to explain things better, you know he is just parroting the information he’s been fed. 

The French course that year was having its own problems. The first teacher left after the first couple or three lessons, then the second one came who’d continue for a longer period, a third chap started to take classes on Sundays, and finally, the treasurer would pick up the pieces. Each had their own way of teaching, and they covered different areas of the course book — in short, it was not easy to follow the curriculum. We were pulled into many directions, totally out of sync, but two things were happening amid all this chaos: our main character — let’s call him ‘Boss’ —hadn’t learned anything whilst the rest of the group made progress.

Like in the COVID test kits, you have a test bar to see that the test results are accurate, or like a checksum in IT to confirm the correctness of data; I’ll take the example of the 11-year-old boy to explain the progress. He was of average intelligence and not highly passionate about the French language either. It’s just that he had wealthy parents and was told he might as well take the lessons with his sister. Preliminary-level French is not difficult; you learn how to say your name, buy train tickets, ask directions, order food, etc. Our checksum schoolboy showed progress expected of someone of his age — towards the end of the term, he could say his name, <<je m’appelle xxx>>, or his age<< j’ai onze ans>>, that he likes cricket <<j’aime cricket>> (sic).

Compared to that standard, our Boss, on the other hand, was on a different level — much lower. All he could say was <<je m’appelle>>. Anything beyond that, and he would look clueless about what was asked, try to mumble something and stop midway as if some indomitable force was preventing him from uttering what he was trying to say, and then shake his head. It’s not that the teachers were not empathic or patient with his strife, but his inability to even try showed the lack of basic communication skills expected of an MBA aspirant, especially in a country like India where the competition is cutthroat. Even outside the classroom, all our discussions led to how useless and incompetent he thought the teachers were. 

You can see his logic, more so now than during that era, of playing the victim. This is why I brought in the example of the 11-year-old schoolboy to act as our indicator for the base level of progress. After being around him for a few days, I came to the conclusion that he was a vain person, mollycoddled all his life, possibly told he was a genius by overzealous parents, and that life was catching up. 

So, three months came and gone, the allegations continued, as did the mumbling and shaking head, and we heard no more than <<je m’appelle>> and <<j’habite à>>. We had the end-of-term test, the last time the institute used its own tests. As expected, we had a broad spectrum of results, with both our checksum and Boss failing the test. On a queer turn of events, even checksum scored higher than our main character. However, it was the end of the Canada pathway for Boss, and as we registered ourselves to the next grade, he could not until he resat the tests. I thought he became one of those people you’d come across in your life, share a few moments with, and never have your paths crossed again. 

How wrong I was! Not only did he manage to cross my path, but he also crossed the lives of millions of people, at least for a few days. We fast forward a few years, and I had left the French institute with bitterness about their lack of initiative to run courses at a higher level, started studying German instead, and was about to embark on my own MBA journey. I was in the middle of sorting all affairs in India before setting sail to supposedly greener pastures when our city came to a standstill one monsoon day. Threats have been made to the police that bombs will go off in several popular areas of the city. Within hours, these suspect areas were evacuated, and busy thoroughfares were replaced by post-apocalyptic spaces devoid of human existence. The hour of the blast came and went, and nothing happened. It was a hoax. 

With the city linked to being the entrepôt for terrorists coming from abroad, a threat like this could never be ignored, and the police acted swiftly despite their notoriety for being lackadaisical. Not only did they manage to evacuate the areas efficiently, but their cyber crime team also swung into action and managed to close in the net. They zeroed in on where the threat emails originated — a cyber café in affluent suburbia, the owner of which is no other than our old Boss! His face was on the front page of every newspaper that day and on all major TV channels as he was marched into the police van to be put into custody. And that’s how I came across him for the second time. 

For the first few moments, I racked my brain to remember where I had seen him before, but once I made the link, I could not help but wonder how he managed to send the hoax threats. To become a terrorist or even plot hoaxes, you have to be brainwashed for their cause, but beyond that, you’d expect that they still need to be cunning, and like any other miscreants, you’d disguise your trails. Our guy did not fit the profile, and who would commit such a foolish act from the place they owned! He might not be the brightest bulb you’d come across, but surely the police would take that factor into account! Yet, in the eyes of the law, the searches led to him, and in the eyes of the 10 million habitants and across the country where the news spread fast, he was seen to be colluding with terrorists. It had severe consequences; not only did it turn your and your close ones’ lives upside down, but even a false conviction marks you for life. 

The saga continued for months as police gathered further evidence and concluded that his cyber café was used to send the threats, but he had no involvement in it. He was eventually granted bail and possibly acquitted afterwards. From the moment I recognised him, I had no doubt that he was made a scapegoat; he did not have the mental faculties to plot anything as devious. I did consider contacting the police, but the friends and colleagues I spoke to all advised against it. In hindsight, they were right; I didn’t know him long enough or close enough to claim his innocence, and it had been a few years since I had last seen him — long enough to be converted to a cause. Besides, once committed to becoming a witness, it probably would have meant not being able to leave the country, and I was flying just over a month later. 

So, there you go, my experience of knowing someone who was once charged with spreading a terror threat that brought a city to a standstill, traumatised millions of people and caused immense damage to small businesses. Yet, in the end, after the dust settled a few days later, the false allegations have scarred Boss more than it did to anyone else. For the time I knew Boss, I think he was dragged over the coals for being naïve about his business and how the authorities chased the red herring for months, letting the real perpetrators abscond at their leisure. Over the years, I’d come across many more people who would support genocide, forced displacement of populations, racial/religious/gender discrimination and torture, all in the name of ‘right’ religion or ‘right’ government or ‘correcting’ history. None of them would go on a trial, and dissemination of hate speech would soon become so commonplace that I think if Boss was found complicit in these allegations, all he would end up with is a blocked-up social media profile.