Arrest Me or Erase Me — But Your Corporate Empire Cannot Silence Me: A Letter to Ajay Piramal

Posted on 4th November, 2025 (GMT 03:17 hrs)

ABSTRACT

This satirical polemic addresses Ajay Piramal and the wider nexus of the BJP-led state and crony corporates (notably Adani-Ambani), charging them with using legal, political, and extra-legal means to silence dissent. Framed as two provocative requests, the author first volunteers to be arrested and prosecuted for “defamation” — demanding the spectacle of litigation as a public test of whether asking questions about the DHFL debacle is now a punishable offense. The letter catalogs named victims of legal harassment, violence, and suspicious deaths (journalists, RTI activists, and dissenting civil-society actors), criticizes SLAPP-style tactics attributed to corporate counsel (DSK Legal), and recalls Vijay Mallya’s critique of Indian prisons to underline the contested nature of incarceration. Second, in darker satirical mode, the author offers to be “erased” by the state-corporate apparatus to expose the climate in which inconvenient lives are neutralized, invoking calls previously made for legalizing active euthanasia as a political statement about living under a failing “welfare” state. The piece concludes by situating the critique within Mumbai’s cultural imagery — quoting “Yeh Hai Bombay Meri Jaan” — and appends a list of institutional and international recipients.

Introductory Note:
This open letter — “Arrest Me or Erase Me — But Your Corporate Empire Cannot Silence Me” — is a satirical yet deeply political address to corporate tycoon Ajay Piramal, framed as both a provocation and a plea. Written in the shadow of India’s shrinking democratic space, it indicts the entwined power of the BJP-led state, corporate monopolies, and complicit legal machinery that weaponize defamation and Strategic litigation against public participation (SLAPP) against all forms of democratic dissent. With biting irony, the author (also a DHFL victim) offers himself for arrest or erasure, transforming personal vulnerability into a public act of resistance against authoritarian capitalism.

Sub: Arrest Me or Erase Me — But Your Corporate Empire Cannot Silence Me

Dear Mr. Piramal,

In the midst of an undeclared emergency in India⤡ — a polity where we now need a microscope to find a “free and just society” — I write to you, a “philanthropic” capitalist⤡ ⤡ ⤡ who moves easily between honours and boardrooms, handshake photos, private bargains and take rushed recourse to legal measures⤡ going contrary to the principles of Gandhi as you have sale-brated him through your “Gandhi Foundation”⤡.

In this connection, I have two requests to the BJP‑led government, to crony corporates like Adani and Ambani, and to your “kind” conscience‑(less) conscious capitalist self⤡:

a)      I want to be arrested for supposedly “defaming” you.

Yes, you read that right: arrest me. Book me for “defamation” again and again⤡ ⤡. Fine me with a ridiculous/fictitious amount of 100 crores. Put me through the spectacle of legal theatrics⤡. I want to be folded into the same ledger that contains the names of those who stood up and were punished for doing so. People who asked questions, reported, litigated or insisted on transparency or justice or democracy and who then faced harassment through unwarranted SLAPPs, indefinite imprisonment without trial, suspicious deaths or worse include Khurram Parvez, Fahad Shah, Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, Varavara Rao, Sudha Bharadwaj, Father Stan Swamy, Prof. G. N. Saibaba, Sanjiv Bhatt, Medha Patkar, Sonam Wangchuk — and so many journalists, transparency activists, and environmental activists, who were attacked or killed in recent years. Let my name be added to that list. Hence, I wish to be arrested.
Do not hide the process behind legal notices and ex parte orders. If “defamation” is your SLAPP instrument, swing it openly — state the evidence, let cross‑examination do its work. If the state’s law is used to punish democratic dissent, then let the punishment at least be public and thus available for open critique. Your amateurish representative DSK Legal’s repetitive SLAPPs⤡ ⤡ appear to be legally intimidating, but lack genuine substance, so, I am (un)happy to note that your initial appeal in the Bombay High Court was cancelled.

You had re-submitted the plea to Bombay High Court (Case No. S/42/2025) on behalf of a non-existent company, PCHFL (this entity has so many co-existent spectral forms: Piramal Finance Ltd., Piramal Enterprises Ltd., and so on). What is going on, Mr. paramavaisnava? Really, you are a king of (de-)mergers⤡ in the cases of both your pharma and finance empires.

In the context of arrests and defamation, I had appealed to you and your amateurish legal team earlier through the following:

Dear Mr. Ajay Piramal, I Wanna Be Arrested!⤡

Dear Mr. Piramal and DSK Legal Team, I wanna be a Defamer⤡

I also recall the recent litigation climate in which journalists who asked evidentially justified questions about crony Adani’s (who, as a dummy bidder, probably deceived you at the time of DHFL bidding, sorry betting⤡, as he knew that your DHFL-acquisition was fraught with legal fiasco since the very beginning) corporatism were hauled into court — the high‑profile suits and takedown attempts against critics of conglomerates are now routine, and independent reporters who probe corporate‑government links have found themselves on the receiving end of powerful law‑firms’ wrath. Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and other non‑Godi journalists have had to fight such SLAPP-type legal harassments as well as seizing of their infrastructure, after writing about such politically-shielded corporate groups.

Press Freedom In India: A Declining Trajectory⤡

And please do remember: even the super‑rich wilful defaulter (and BJP-enabled) Vijay Mallya invoked the precarious condition of Indian prisons as part of his so-called defence⤡ — a reminder that incarceration is not a neutral instrument citizens should envy. If your answer to volunteers for arrest is the threat of prison, note that prisons themselves are contested territory in public discourse. It is true, however, that Indian prisons are far from being “correctional homes”. Further, it is rather strange that Mr. Mallya, in a recent extended interview⤡, sought to defend himself by scapegoating the very BJP-led governance that had enabled him to remain scot-free in the first place.  

Hence: arrest me for raising questions, for insisting on democratized dissent about the alleged/reported financial expropriation in the DHFL debacle — allegedly powered by the cozy nexus between single party led power and chosen corporate tycoons. If asking questions, linking facts and demanding the public accounting of depositor losses is “defamation” in this new order, I volunteer to be tried.

b) If not arrested, I, a DHFL victim, wish my being to be terminated, annihilated or extinguished by the state‑corporate nexus.(Here I speak the dark satire plainly — because if the State prefers the quieter route, if inconvenient lives are “erased” rather than processed through public procedure, then let that preference be visible. I say this to expose the calculation.) The catalogue of suspicious deaths⤡ that shadow political contests is long: Anil Dave, Haren Pandya, Pujari Lal Das, Justice Loya and so many others are part of that grim rollcall. If the cost of public questioning (pariprasna as enshrined in the Gita, 4.34) is “disappearance” or the tidy account of an “accident,” then the logic of private power is complete: “inconvenient” people become inconvenient footnotes.

That is why I previously appealed for legalizing active euthanasia⤡ — not because I am committing self-harm, but because if the BJP-ruled state’s (un-)protective umbrella has holes big enough to let policy, justice and human lives fall through, then the question of whether to live under such a “welfare” state is itself a political question. I do not wish to live within the ambit of a so‑called welfare state that increasingly behaves like a theocratic, crony, oligarchic, Orwellian state‑corporate formation. Since death penalty/capital punishment involves a cruel, tormenting procedure, it is better that the Indian crony oligarchy adopts active euthanasia as a clinical termination method. You can help in this process with your Piramal pharma mediation.

Do not ask me to forget recent precedents. Since 2014, journalists and activists in India have been killed while performing their duties—a deeply troubling pattern documented by press-freedom and human-rights monitors. Among those assassinated are Gauri Lankesh, M. M. Kalburgi, Govind Pansare, Narendra Dabholkar, Syed Shujaat Bukhari, Santanu Bhowmik, Sudip Datta Bhaumik, and Navin Nishchal—each silenced for challenging communal hatred, exposing corruption, or reporting dissent. Others, such as Pehlu Khan and Mohammad Aqlaq, were mercilessly lynched for their food habits. Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula’s institutional murder stands as further reminder of how dissenters are criminalized or erased. These are not isolated tragedies but part of a documented continuum of assaults on truth and resistance. Moreover, I am an atheist—an Earthian—belonging to no imagined geo-political nation-state, and thus untraceable under the NRC-CAA-NPR-SIR regime unleashed by the BJP’s crony fascist politics.

It’s a known fact — and not a boast — that supari-killers and shadow economies exist where property and power concentrate; the Mumbai shadow‑economy of violence is a service industry for those who want problems solved quietly, just like how easily Mandoli or Hawala transactions are achieved. It is also a well-known fact that professional contract killers, like the late (killed) Sohrab Uddin Sheikh, are easily available in India — particularly in this shadowy Mumbai. Take note: the city’s old song about derangement feels less like a lament and more like a map. In the end I remember the lines everyone still hums, because nothing about them has grown rosier:

“Beghar ko aawara yahan kehte has has
Khud kaate gale sabke kahe isko business…
Ae Dil hai Mushkil Jeena yahan,
Zara Haatke, Zara Banchke,
Yeh Hai Bombay Meri Jaan!”

“The homeless here are called wanderers, laughing as they go,
After cutting the throats of others, they themselves call it business…
Oh heart, living here is difficult,
Stay away, and be a little careful,
This is Bombay, my dear!”

(Yes — the metropolitan city’s meaningless, almost absurdist state of being has not improved; in fact, it has worsened.)

Hypothetically Yours (for now),

नमस्ते अस्तु मा मा हिंसीः

लड़ेंगे या मरेंगे!

इंक़लाब ज़िंदाबाद!

Debeprasad (sic) Sadhan (patriarchal insertion?!) Bandopadhyay (sic)

(For the record: still awaiting both refund and accountability)On behalf of Once in a Blue Moon Academia (OBMA)⤡

COPY TO:

1.   The Hon’ble Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

2.  Droupadi Murmu, The Hon’ble President, Republic of India

3. Shri A.H. Laddhad, The Hon’ble Prothonotary and Senior Master, Bombay High Court (Case No. S/42/2025)

4. Mr. J. P. Nadda, The Hon’ble President, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)

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