India, Dec. 15 -- There are probably tens of thousands of furious flyers, who want the CEO of IndiGo Airline, Peiter Elbers, to go. There may be a few hundred, who desire that he is arrested for the way the airline treated thousands of passengers over the past two weeks, as thousands of flights were either delayed or cancelled. But even the worst critics of IndiGo will not like Elbers to suffer the fate of another CEO of a past, and similarly successful, private airline.

Three decades ago, to be precise, in 1995, Thakiyuddin Abdul Wahid left for his office in the western suburbs of Mumbai. He had received several threats from the city's underworld, even as the leadership of the most dreaded gang had shifted lock, stock, and barrel to the...