The Uncertain Life Of A Fugitive.

'The Fugitive' - two words glamourised and immortalised by the American TV series and the subsequent film. Words that launched David Janssen to international stardom then.

But in the real world, I wonder how it must feel to be a fugitive on the run. After reading about former magistrate Balbir Kaur, charged with corruption and who escaped the clutches of the law while on bail, it got me thinking on how uncertain her life was and still is.

If only she had had the courage then to face the law, admitted her mistakes and served time for her offences, she would not be in the mess she is in today. After all how harsh could the sentence have been? Instead she took the foolish way out by running away from justice. She of all persons should know of the long arm of the law. Is it worth the turmoil she must be undergoing now?

Having led a life of deceit for the past twenty years in a faraway land under an assumed name and perhaps having thought the worst was behind her, it must have come as a real shock to have been so easily and openly unmasked. Balbir Kaur is once again on the run. She was younger then, but time must have taken its toll. Will she have the energy and the wherewithal to maintain the pace? Now that her face has been splashed all over the papers in India, a country where the media is free, hungry and actively into investigative reporting, can her guile enable her to remain undetected?

I pity that woman. I neither condone her corrupt actions nor her stupid attempt to avoid her just desserts. But in the past two decades she must have raised a family and there are people who now care for and are dependent on her as much as she depends on and cares for them. If she gets caught now, all that she had built, carefully and tirelessly over the years, goes up in smoke, if it hasn't already.

Let this be a valuable lesson for would-be fugitives; the life and times of Balbir Kaur