An Indian friend of mine was once arrested simply for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. He was sitting in a restaurant in Pudu at a time when the police were trying to nab some Indian gangsters.

When the gangsters noticed plainclothes policemen approaching them, they started to run away. Confused, my friend also ran into the back lane. The problem was that no one knew who the plainclothes policemen were, and many mistook them for thugs.

When my friend was accosted in the back lane by the plainclothes police he tried to get away from them, as he thought he was being robbed by thieves.

The policemen did not identify themselves, so it was not anyone's fault for mistaking that they were indeed thugs. Of course, those who were not Indians were spared arrest as they were not their targets that day.

My friend was later apprehended and brought to the police station where he was made to confess to being in the gang. The strange part is that he did not know any one of those who were also detained there, and they also did not know him. He only happened to live nearby the restaurant, that was his favorite joint.

In the end, he was banished to Cameron Highlands where he worked as a waiter in a restaurant for two years to fend for himself. On the last week of his two-year banishment period, he was on a taxi to return to his rented room. However, the taxi strayed just slightly out of the two-kilometer radius of his banishment area, and sure enough a policeman happened to be there, as if he knew the taxi was taking my friend.

It also looked as though the taxi-driver and the policeman had pre-planned to nab my friend again.

And sure enough, this Indian man was detained for straying beyond the banishment area, although it was no fault of his to be out of the area, as the infringement was not of his own doing but the taxi-driver’s.

He was then sent to Pulau Jerejak in Pulau Pinang for two more years, and was later released.

His only crime was that he had gone to a restaurant for a drink on the morning of a raid on a group of Indian gangsters.

Therefore, to those who assume anyone who had been banished had done anything criminal, he is wrong; there are those who have been banished for no reason at all.