A few short years back, someone died in Kolkata. Let’s call him Koustuv Paul. He had retired from the IPS just a month earlier. The guy died by slitting his wrist. His wife found him in a pool of blood when she returned from outside. He had left behind a six-page suicide note.

Koustuv was a year or two junior to me in college but a batch senior to me in the IPS. I didn’t know him in college but met him first in the National Police Academy. We used to have a sandwich programme of basic training then. Called ‘sandwich’ because we used to have a Phase I of about a year, then go for district training in our allotted state cadres and return to the Academy for Phase II of three months. Two batches used to intermingle during the Phase II of the senior batch. That word ‘sandwich’ has had very unfortunate connotations for Koustuv.

In the Academy, we used to be extremely jealous of him. He was very good looking, an athlete par excellence (this is rated important by IPS guys, especially in the Academy days) and was always surrounded by a bevy of girls. During training, any type of leave is a strict no–no but Koustuv used to manage his leave easily because he was very popular with all the lady wives of the faculty.

In the cadre, he gave us more reasons to be jealous. He was very, very ambitious and managed the best first posting, SDPO of a sub division close to Calcutta. For the guys likely to reach the very top in the IPS, i.e., DGP, Director CBI, etc., certain posting points are indicative and Koustuv ticked them all during his first 6/7 postings. For the powers that be, he was the ultimate “bhalo chhele,” (golden boy), the man who could never put a foot wrong. Plus, he had pedigree – his father, Mr. Sujit Paul was a celebrated IPS officer of the cadre and was a Padma Shri awardee. But all this jealousy on our part was never very bitter because Koustuv was one of the friendliest souls on the planet and pleasant to a fault.

I had my first inkling that that there was more than met the eye when I got posted to North 24 Parganas where he had just been transferred from. I heard tales of how he kept listening to and monitoring the Police wireless right up to the minute he reached his wedding venue, how he went for his honeymoon to Jalpaiguri, stayed in a colleague’s house and the colleague and his house got constantly rattled by his wife’s banging the doors all the time, how he would be visiting Police stations from 10 AM to 10 PM every day, mostly without reason, and so on. I put it down to (extreme) workaholism and consequent marital discord.

His career flourished. He continued to be a pet of the Chief Minister, the Police Minister, the stalwarts in the ruling Party and went from celebrated posting to celebrated posting, as SP of coveted districts. We did not know much about his personal life except that he had had a son and both husband and wife used to run minithons and subsist on some fancy salad diet. Suddenly, there was a divorce petition by the wife and the newspapers went to town. In the petition, the wife had detailed all her problems in the marriage, the chief one being that Koustuv had no business marrying her despite having a different sexual orientation.

The name, Koustuv, went into local Bengali expressions – “are you normal or Koustuv?,” and so on. We all had to rejig our past envy, etc. – all that ladies’ man bit being blown to the winds, the world started revolving again for mere mortals like us. The divorce came through but the career continued to flourish.

Disaster struck when there was the first, and so far possibly the only, allegation of sexual harassment of its kind lodged with the Human Rights Commission. The alleged predator was Koustuv Paul. And the victim was a Constable. Male. Soon the tales started tumbling out. How he used to spot young male recruits and “attach” them to his house on various pretexts, how he had ruined the marital lives of several young Constables, and so on. In the investigation that followed, Koustuv tried to show that he was on leave and out of station on the relevant dates. Unfortunately, he had signed and sanctioned leave to some of those same Constables on the dates concerned. He was found guilty and the Human Rights Commission imposed punishment which also led to suspension and Departmental Enquiry against him. Subsequently, there was another Departmental Enquiry against him for gross financial irregularities. Ever since 2009, he was put on “compulsory waiting,” i.e., no assignment.

I knew the story thus far when I left the cadre for my second deputation. When I came back, I heard that Koustuv had been languishing without a posting for all these years and the Departmental Enquiries were still going on. He had adopted a spiritual path, called himself Yogi Brindeswar Paritran and was attached to a Math. Plus, he had married again. To a female – yeah, another Yogini!

Well, there you have it. A really tortured soul, sandwiched between overwhelming ambition and desire for acceptance on the one hand and, on the other hand, the extreme difficulty and loneliness of being a homosexual in India, especially in a high–visibility job like the Police. He brought a few of the misfortunes upon himself but all these enquiries should have had a sunset clause rather than dragging on for a decade. He should have been punished and paid whatever remained due, if anything, at least after retirement – his suicide note talked about dues of more than Rs. 55 lacs but the government stated that all dues had been paid.

A very, very unfortunate and tragic end. I tell it to you because stories of despondency and despair should also be told. Also because, I feel, despite Koustuv’s misfortune and foibles, the preciousness of life should have somehow found a way to triumph over the desolation of death.

[Names, places and a few details have been altered to protect identities.]