The man did not look very healthy when we showed up at his place. Straight out of the hospital after three stents, Hassenjee Ruhomally was recovering from the aftermath of the operation, from a Rs400,000 he – unlike his accuser – had to settle but particularly from the ordeal he and his wife have been through. From a lying position, Ruhomally found it in him to continue his fight. He is not the type to take things lying down. 

His fight is not for himself. He does not feel any anger to-wards the man who put him in that situation in the first place – Minister of Housing and Lands Showkutally Soodhun. As a matter of fact, at this point in time, he is not even thinking of suing him. His fight is for justice and for this provisional charge nonsense to stop. “I am not an eye-for an-eye per-son,” he told us. “But this injustice has to stop.” If Ruhomally wins this fight, the country and its institutions will go forward by leaps and bounds. But, as the song goes, “It’s a Long Way To Tipperary/Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag.” And troubles there are for Ruhomally and his old kit bag is big enough. 

From the start, we felt that it is not so much spending time in a detention centre which has hurt the couple most. “Sleep-ing on a thin mattress on the floor was not a very pleasant experience,” he says and he expressed more concern about his wife who was locked up in another cell. “The worst part of it is the humiliation of having both of us strip naked and kneel on the floor,” he added, trying to get out of bed to show us the humiliating posi-tion he seems to feel so strongly about. “What exactly were they hoping to find?” His wife, so far listening silently, became very emotional as she said, “The police treated us as if we were hardened criminals. It is so unfair!” 

“I do not regret calling Soodhun a liar. I am still calling him a liar because he has not convinced me otherwise.” 

Ruhomally did not expect a royal treatment at the detention centre. Far from it. But he ex-pected some decency, which he did not apparently get: “I am diabetic. So I asked for a cup of unsweetened tea to take my medicines and they refused to give me one. They said I needed a prescription for that. A prescription?! Is that the first thing you think of looking for when the police come to your doorstep to arrest you and your wife?” he asks. 

Ruhomally is unrepentant about what he did. “The post I was jailed for was shared by over a thousand people. I was one of those. And not the first one either. Paul Lismore was apparently the first Facebooker to have posted the credit memo on his Facebook page.” We put the question as to whether Paul Lismore’s profile does not be-long to Ruhomally. His answer was short and displayed a great deal of humility: “I wish I could write the kind of perfect English he does.” Indeed, anyone who goes on Paul Lis-more’s page can attest to the high, flawless quality of English his posts display. 

Who exactly is Hassenjee Ruhomally, the man who gained fame overnight thanks to a now-notorious credit memo? Son of an anaesthetist, and holder of a PhD in cyber security from Stanford University, no less, Ruhomally is currently working with Google. He has kept a low profile until our minister of housing and lands took him out of anonymity. What he objects to the most is the injustice met-ed out to him and his wife, which he does not wish upon other citizens. And this is the reason why he will direct his legal action against the police, rather than Soodhun. “Soodhun made a statement to the police accusing me of sharing false news and a fabri-cated video,” he said. “The police immediately came and arrested me and my wife. That means I could make any allegations against my neighbour and the police will go and subject him to the same treatment they subjected me to without even checking the facts! This provisional charge rubbish has to stop!” he repeated. 

“Why me? Why not the other 1,000 people? Why not the publications – like Sunday Times – which also published the memo?”

Ruhomally suspects the po-lice may have other motives be-hind his arrest. “Not everything should evolve around the British American In-vestment affair and the Rawat family. These are normal people who should be allowed to lead normal lives like everyone else while waiting for the courts of law to decide who is innocent and who is guilty.” 

His experience at the Clin-ique Darné was also something he feels strongly about. To the pain of surgery, add a policeman spending 24 hours in the same room – in case a guy who has just had three stents placed in his heart decided to get miracu-lously better and abscond – and top up with two policemen walking into the Intensive Care Unit with their shoes on and no protection whatsoever – police-men do not carry germs, it would seem – to question him straight after an operation. This plunged the whole medical staff into a state of panic. “What is so urgent that they have to put my health in danger for in a place where no visits are allowed?” he asks. 

He is appalled by the fact that the Central Criminal Investigation Division (CCID) has not bothered to check whether the credit memo is fake or not. “I insisted on that but they were not interested.” For Ruhomally, the enquiry was just a show. “The arrest was already prepared. They said the orders came from above.” Faced with our incred-ulousness, he even added, “In front of my lawyer, Zakir Mohamed, they told me ‘the orders come from above’! It is very serious in a democratic country,” he said. If the CCID stands for ‘Central Criminal Investigation Division, then their role is to investigate and if the memo is genuine, someone must pay and be held accountable. If it is not, then you can talk about arresting the person who maliciously defamed Soodhun. And I’ll accept my fault for having shared a fake post,” he added.

Ruhomally feels a strong sense of injustice. He has done what he is allowed to do in a de-mocracy: share a memo. He is equally unrepentant about calling Soodhun a liar. “I do not regret calling Soodhun a liar. I am still calling him a liar because he has not convinced me oth-erwise,” he said defiantly. “He is still hiding something from the public!” He added, “And me, I ask for an explanation about a credit memo and I find myself locked up!” He adds. “The reference number on the memo published by l’express and the one on the credit note are the same. So how can they accuse me of having posted a fake memo?”

“Soodhun is still hiding something from the public!”

There is one question which keeps coming up as a leit motiv: “Why me? Why not the other 1,000 people? Why not the publications – like Sunday Times – which also published the memo?” He also added that if the memo had been fake, he would not have shared it or, at worst, he would have shared it from a different profile. 

Is the case over now that Soodhun said he had withdrawn his plaint? “That’s what I thought when I heard Soodhun officially declare that. But when I called the CCID and asked if I could have my computers back since the case has been withdrawn, they laughed at me,” he said. 

Does Ruhomally feel that Soodhun is – as he declared – forgiving by withdrawing his case? “Frankly speaking, he would not have withdrawn the case if he had not been cornered.” He adds, “The punishment is harsh. My wife is a British citizen and her whole family is in the UK. As things stand, she cannot even leave the country to go and visit them because a minister said ‘Lock them up’? And he says he is forgiving? Come on!”