Derided by the media and under pressure to show results following the series of terror attacks in the country, the security establishment recently announced a number of arrests relating to the explosions in Ahmedabad and Bangalore and the earlier ones in Jaipur.

While it is praiseworthy that the police acted comparatively quickly this time in tracing the culprits, it later turned out that some of those arrested, whose names the media had readily released, had no involvement in the dastardly acts.

But the damage had already been done, as a ’suspect’ told a newspaper after his release: “I will have to live with a ‘terrorist’ tag for the rest of my life.” Anwar Hussein, a doctor, said his family now faces abuses from neighbours and customers are avoiding his family’s business of iron work in his native village.

Rashid Hussain, an IT professional, said he was sacked by his employers following his arrest, even though he was released after eight days in detention.

Muslim organizations and rights groups have cried foul over the arrests, complaining that the detentions were ‘illegal’ and a violation of human rights. Indian law requires detainees to be provided a legal counsel and brought before a magistrate within 24 hours, which did not happen in this case, like many others before.

While special laws like the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) allows authorities to detain suspects for longer periods, the detainees in this case were not charged with anything. But while many say the authorities acted ‘illegally’, experts say it is a grey area, as there is a provision in the law book which allows the police to arrest someone on suspicion alone.

“Article 41 in the CrPC empowers the police to arrest anyone on the basis of suspicion even if there is no proof. If the investigating officer later comes to the conclusion that there is no evidence, under article 157, he can say that he has stopped the probe and release the person,” Supreme Court criminal lawyer D B Goswami says.

With India losing the maximum number of lives in terrorist attacks in the world after Iraq (according to a Times of India report), many would argue that the unfortunate incidents are unavoidable in the fight against terror - collateral damage, if you may.

But what about the old adage, “Better 100 guilty men at liberty than one innocent man in prison.”

Law enforcement agencies should by all means investigate and question anyone they think is involved, or know anything about the perpetrators of such mindless violence, but there ought to be a more discreet way of carrying out the investigations, like not releasing the identity of the person until the police are sure of his/her involvement in a crime.

And the role of the media can never be overstated, with the enormous influence it has over public perception. A reputation, not least a life, can be destroyed by one incorrect report by an overzealous media.

And what can be said of the charge by Muslims and civil rights groups that Muslims are targeted by authorities every time an explosion takes place? And the trend of officials naming Islamic groups as suspects immediately after any terror strike when it is obvious that facts have not been ascertained yet.

Has “M” become the new scarlet letter, a metaphorical ‘guilty’ tag on persons by association to a particular religion?

I never thought I’d see the day when a guy would shy away from feminine attention. An innocuous remark I left complimenting a friend’s photo on a social networking website backfired.

I sensed panic in his voice when he called me to clarify matters.”I am going through a messy divorce and my wife’s lawyer is tracking my Facebook profile. Any remotely intimate conversation with a member of the opposite sex could be interpreted as infidelity and I would be slapped with anti-dowry laws and made to pay heavily,” he said.

An out-of-court settlement in a failed marriage has so far cost my friend a posh south Delhi apartment and his car, assets that had taken him five years of hard work to acquire.

But he is more concerned the law will not protect his rights if his wife decides to file charges of harassment.

“Something she is brainwashed to do every day by her parents to make the most of the divorce,” he said.

As gender laws in India get tougher to protect women harassed for dowry, I am forced to wonder if we are missing a point here.

Websites, blogs and support groups have mushroomed in cyberspace offering free advice on misuse of the Dowry Prohibition Act  and Article 498A of the Indian Penal Code, one that men’s groups say are tools for ”legal extortion by radical feminists without a thought for the implications.”

Over 19,000 false cases were registered under Section 498A IPC and 615 under Dowry Prohibition Act, Minister of State for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury told the lower house of parliament in November 2007, citing statistics furnished by the National Crime Records Bureau for 2004-06.

Offences under IPC 498A are “non-bailable, cognizable and non-compoundable” with a prison term of up to three years.

Advocacy groups like www.498a.org, savefamily.org and the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Husbands aka Crime Against Man Cell help men at the receiving end of anti-dowry laws.

Delhi advocate R.P.Chugh, who heads the Man Cell, says domestic violence is a two-way road and need not always refer to wife-bashing as per popular perception. If you are a married man, you know the deadly effects of silent treatment, constant nagging or sulking for days.

Women’s groups argue that actual cases of male victimization are far less compared to the abuse and domestic violence women endure everyday across the country.

I could not agree more with a Delhi High Court judge who observed that laws were made to protect hundreds of women tortured and killed for dowry every year but have become a tool for urban middle or upper-middle class women looking to make a quick buck through divorce.

Anti-dowry laws are meant to give voice to silent victims of social abuse — a Herculean task in a country where family pride, fear of retribution and illiteracy pose stumbling blocks.

The National Commission for Women is campaigning for stricter punishment for offenders and demanding that the scope of the Act be increased.

Delhi alone accounts for 18.7 per cent of dowry death cases and 17.1 pct of cruelty by husbands and relatives, according to a 2006 report by the National Crime Records Bureau.

A reality check in largely illiterate rural India, where women fight poverty and domestic violence every day, throws up questions whether anti-dowry laws can be effectively implemented.  They are ones, I’m afraid, who will never hear of outrageous out-of-court divorce settlements.  In most case, they will be thankful to escape with their lives.

Has the time come then to introspect on the far-reaching impact anti-dowry laws have on the lives of men and women and the burden on judiciary with every false claim of harassment?

Often police fail to conduct proper investigations before hauling off an elderly family member to jail based on a complaint by a woman. At the same time, hundreds of complaints of abuse at the hands of in-laws go unnoticed in rural India.

I feel strong laws are necessary to protect women against abuse. Laws that will deter repeat offenders. But I want them where they are truly needed, implemented through an unbiased and transparent police system with wider reach and humane approach.

It’s tricky being an American outside the U.S.

It’s not just the taxman you can’t hide from — your native land really is the focus of global attention.

Whether it’s the economy, global warming or some other guy’s fight, the U.S. is sometimes a model to follow but more often gets the blame.

I am rarely credited with superhuman intelligence and strength (even my daughter is a skeptic) but my country is.

I for one have long argued American power is significantly less than what it’s perceived to be. But you just can’t escape it.

CIA agents descend from the sky and implant things in people, America has an earthquake machine and the Gujarat riots went according to a Washington plan.

Maybe people like to think someone, somewhere is in charge. But reality ain’t nowhere near as slick: Iraq and Afghanistan have been quagmires, Hurricane Katrina killed more than a thousand (thankfully not repeated by Gustav), and the mortgage backed loans crisis has written off years of global growth.

So much for total control.

It’s always been clear to me the U.S. is run by humans as fallible as the next guy. So could this weekend’s strange turn of events in U.S. Republican politics be the nail in the coffin for America’s image as a semi-responsible democracy.

How to make sense of it? Here in India tolerance for drama runs high (think MPs waving cash in parliament) - many friends and colleagues look away from India’s vibrant politics hoping for a glimpse of something more serious, something more effective, outside.

But scripted drama is not for India alone. Alaska Governor Sarah Palin , politician, reformer, and now mom of a soon-to-be teenage mom is running for the U.S. Vice Presidency.

That means Palin, who has apparently “never really thought of running for office” becomes president if John McCain falls ill, dies or gets killed (remember he is 72 and has had cancer).

No small job for someone with just two years experience as governor of a state (yes, neither is being a mom to 5 kids!) Maybe she really is up to it. And perhaps Palin could become America’s Mayawati, delivering Republicans an entire caste of working mothers?

Regardless, McCain’s choice offers a fascinating peek at his thinking - the attempted message looks like “I am a maverick” but the real one may be “I am desperate” - actually seeking the votes of disaffected Hillary supporters.

Is McCain that afraid of Obama? Whatever the case, despite promises from both sides to stick to the issues (remember, the economy? global warming? war in Iraq?) this Presidential election now seems on cue to follow a reality TV script.

Is this election, as Woody Allen said in his 1971 comedy about a banana republic (”Bananas”), becoming “a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham”? We welcome your views.

As the deadlock over Singur and the Tata Nano plant rumbles on, much of the debate seems to be missing the point.

This week, Mukesh Ambani said a “fear psychosis is being created to slow down certain projects of national importance” and said industry should be encouraged to make such large investments.

But in the words of the old song by Ella Fitzgerald (and more recently Bananarama) “It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it”.

When I visited Singur back in February 2007, the government claimed that 95 percent of the 14,000 farmers on the affected land had voluntarily accepted an offer of compensation.

The government also claimed the land was not fertile, supporting just one crop a year, and said the compensation package was “exemplary”.

A day spent touring Singur was enough to shed doubt on those claims. Not only was this good, well-irrigated land supporting several crops a year, but more importantly many farmers insisted they had not agreed to leave their land.

In village after village, I found, farmers said they had not signed consent forms, insisting that communist party workers had falsified their signatures.

“People have been intimidated by party workers,” 62-year-old Anil Shantra told me. “They brought out a list of people who agreed to sell, but somebody else has signed on my behalf.”

Back in Kolkata, independent economists said the compensation on offer would not give farmers equivalent returns or allow them to buy land nearby.

My colleague Alistair Scrutton visited Singur this year, and after meeting many more farmers, predicted the deadlock we now see.

It was a similar story in Nandigram. Instead of a system of public consultation, a colonial era land law had been used to seize the land. The government tried to bully people into submission. And then it paid the price.

Should India industrialise further? Of course. Does that mean farmers need to be moved off their land? Of course it does.

The trouble is that in today’s India, farmers do not feel so isolated and alone, and are not so easily bullied.

Car plants are being built in other parts of India without any problems - just look at Tamil Nadu. But land has to be selected carefully to minimise disruptions to farmers, and a fair compensation package offered - surely, given the money involved in the Nano, this would not have been beyond Tata Motors.

West Bengal does have a particular problem - it is densely populated and much of its farmland is fertile. That means it won’t be easy to find land for industry.

All the more reason to tread carefully, consult carefully, and compensate properly. Otherwise land seizures will create more resistance, and more trouble for Indian industry in the future.

Tata plant at Singur: SLIDESHOW

Tata Nano car: SLIDESHOW

Chiranjeevi, 53, is in good company. M.G. Ramachandran, N.T. Rama Rao, J. Jayalalithaa and M. Karunanidhi had all successfully made the leap from silver screen to political stage.

And with assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh looming in 2009, I wouldn’t be too surprised to see Chiranjeevi seated on the chief minister’s chair.

He’s surely got mass appeal. Local television broadcast footage of tens of thousands of supporters hailing the actor at his party’s launch in the temple town of Tirupati.

That sight alone would have caused heartburn to rival politicians, left praying that those numbers won’t actually translate into votes.

South India, with the exception of Kerala, has always been kind to its film stars — catapulting them with ease into the political sphere. Chiranjeevi could also use hordes of hero-worshipping fans to his advantage.

I am not saying that actors make better politicians. But they do have history on their side. At least in south India.

I wonder what will happen if reigning Tamil superstar Rajnikanth throws his hat into the ring.

I am not crazy about cellphones. So when I was asked to cover the midnight launch of the Apple iPhone 3G in India, it didn’t really seem worth sacrificing my sleep.

I walked half-heartedly to the Vodafone store in nearby Connaught Place, hoping to see frenzied youngsters jostling for vantage position outside its shutters. I had read horror stories of people abroad queuing up 60 hours ahead of schedule for a chance to buy the iPhone first.

There was jostling all right, but only among photographers and journalists. There was not a customer in sight.

Till midnight, the media was cloistered inside the store in New Delhi listening to a live band and staring aimlessly at the wall.

At a minute past, the action started. The first buyer was handed the iPhone. He grinned and posed interminably for photos and the news channels. Then the second, third and fourth customer appeared in quick succession.

All of them didn’t mind paying 31,000 rupees ($712) for a phone including some features that don’t even work in India, because the country doesn’t support 3G services yet.

I step outside for a breath of fresh air. A stray dog saunters past — flummoxed by the hubbub no doubt. There are no curious onlookers nearby. Is India really aware the iPhone is out today? Do the majority of its people really care about the high-tech smartphone?

Maybe the outlet launching the iPhone in a Gurgaon mall has done better. Or maybe Indians aren’t really impressed by a phone when inflation is above 12 percent.

Either way, I need to catch up on my lost sleep. Here’s wishing the Apple iPhone 3G better luck over the weekend.

India is no longer the “one-medal nation”. Sushil Kumar ensured that by winning a bronze medal on Wednesday, just a week after shooter Abhinav Bindra struck gold in Beijing.

Kumar beat Leonid Spiridonov of Kazakhstan in a bronze medal bout of the men’s 66kg freestyle wrestling event.

Bindra had won India’s first ever individual Olympic gold medal in the men’s 10m air rifle event on August 11.

And another medal is assured with Indian pugilist Vijender Kumar surviving in the boxing event.

On Wednesday, Sushil Kumar became the first Indian to win a wrestling medal at the Olympics since 1952.

Join us in congratulating him.

It’s official. Vodafone will sell the 8GB 3G iPhone for 31,000 rupees ($712) and the 16GB model for 36,100 rupees ($828). And this for a 3G model when India does not even have 3G services yet.

Vodafone and Airtel will launch the 3G Apple iPhone in India on August 22. Airtel is yet to announce its price for the phones but it’s unlikely the pricing will differ much.

The price of the 8GB model in the U.S. is $199 and $299 for the 16GB model. So is buying the iPhone in India worth it or will the grey market rule?

Who will buy the new iPhone? All those who had pre-booked? The ones who want to get the latest gizmo on day one of its official launch in India or the geeks who cherish anything Apple?

The other night I was surprised to see my seven-year-old son walk out of bed, shivering, crying and barely able to speak.

Calming down after 10 minutes, he said that he was getting regular nightmares about bomb blasts.

India has seen a series of bombings in recent years, this year serial blasts have rocked three major cities.

The first was in the western city of Jaipur on May 13, killing more than 60 people.

At least 16 bombs exploded in Ahmedabad on July 26, a day after blasts in the southern Indian city of Bangalore killed one person and injured several.

Television channels have flashed footage of the bombings time and again and my son has asked me endless questions like “why do people set off bombs and kill”?

I consulted a child psychologist the other day, who gave me a patient hearing and said my son was probably getting panic attacks. He advised me to take him for a counselling session as a precautionary measure.

This incident got me thinking about the effects of violence in children and I wonder how people have been coping with this problem.

A colleague asked me to keep my son away from the television for a while.

Is this the only solution? I am still searching for answers.