India, June 29 -- Dear Dr S. Jaishankar,

One day, when I went to my boss, the late Mr HK Dua's office, neither he nor his secretary was available. They were both busy contacting the management to clear the remuneration dues of our regular columnist, K Subrahmanyam. I found something suspicious.

When I asked Dua saab about it, he showed me an email he had just received from the former director of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, asking for money because he had lost his belongings at a foreign airport.

I had once received a similar letter from former minister Mani Shankar Aiyar. I knew he would never ask me for money, and I had his phone number. So I contacted him and told him his email account had been compromised. He ma...