India, June 15 -- By Dr. K. Javed Nayeem, MD

Some time ago, I had an occasion to write an article about how a petty thief who had stolen a pair of buffaloes and a calf in Karnataka, was nabbed far away in Maharashtra, a full fifty-seven years after he had committed the crime. The man, who had indulged in the theft in the year 1965, when he was just a twenty-year-old, daily wage-earning lad, was a full seventy-seven years old, when he was apprehended in 2023, for a crime, which he himself perhaps had forgotten and even atoned for.

But although God himself had perhaps accepted his repentance and had forgiven him too, the long arm of the law had not forgotten his peccadillo and had kept the dossier on him open and alive at the Police Stati...