India, March 23 -- We were celebrating Holi when social media went abuzz with the news of a serving army officer and his son getting manhandled the previous night allegedly by policemen at Patiala. With many of my relatives and friends serving in Punjab Police, I immediately called them up to check the veracity of the news. Their apologetic tone suggested that something wrong must have happened.

Being a soldier, one felt terrible seeing the video clip of the violence and the anguish in the tone of the officer's wife on TV. I will not go by social media rhetoric or blame games till the inquiry is completed. But a question has been pestering me ever since. Does any citizen deserve this brutal treatment? And if that citizen happens to be a ...