The abduction of Adobe CEO Naresh Gupta's son Anant and the subsequent recovery of the kid was extensively covered in the media.
Can we blame our news channels? After all, it had all the ingredients of a good story. It was the son of a rich man who was kidnapped and in Noida (that happens to be in Uttar Pradesh). One might say that hundreds of children are abdcuted every week in this vast country and none of them gets so much coverage (and in turn media attention).
But the victim has to be in the right place (around Delhi) and belonging to the right family (son of beneficiary of a post-liberalisation era) to get the sort of media coverage that results in police swiftness and action at the government level.
Mercifuly, the kid was safely recovered. Then another surprise awaited us. We were shown the recorded telephonic conversation of Anant's mother with the abductors. Gupta seemed to have sought help of a person expert in tackling abduction cases. With all chutzpah the CEO narrated his own smartness and techno-savvy style.
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Now what a cynic said:
'Nobody is safe, see the car and bodyguards couldn't stop the abduction of the child', said a leftist in a conversation at coffee house.
He further said, 'Earning millions and stashing them in foreign banks you can't think that you are insulated from the rest of Indians'. And then added, 'When you don't give quality education to poor and of course no health facilities, can they ever compete the elite...no....they will become criminals....the elite who don't want to share will have to pay for it....at least the families of many people and that's at least a distribution of wealth....the families of those working for kingpins would at least get a share in such ransoms.....blah blah blah....
I don't have much to say personally. Every life is as important and if his father happens to be rich, it doesn't mean that anybody should have bias against him. But yes, the growing cost of education and the gulf between the lower class and the upper class has widened so much that unless urgent measures are taken to redress that gulf, the society would witness extreme chaos and such crimes as route to earn fast buck.
