India, Nov. 2 -- Elsewhere in the world, Dr Randall Sequeira would have been the toast of the nation. He would have been celebrated as a doctor who gave up the comforts of urban life to serve people whom society had virtually abandoned. In India, however, he is in jail, accused of crimes of a kind that even the dacoits who once terrorised the ravines of Chambal would have struggled to imagine being accused of.

Before discussing his predicament, let me narrate an experience from my own life. For 23 years, I was associated with Deepalaya, an NGO that worked among the poor and marginalised. We had established a 30-bed hospital in a village in Nuh district of Haryana. Finding a doctor for that hospital was one of the most frustrating experi...