5 minutes reading time
Yesterday, April 7th, 2026, my landlord decided that civil law takes too long. He went to Pothanur police station instead.
At 9:51 AM, my phone rang. The voice on the other end identified himself as Sub-Inspector Gajendran. He didn't waste time with small talk. He told me a complaint had been lodged by my house owner, Mr Jagadeesh, because I hadn't vacated the house at 5/1F, 3rd Street East, Sakthi Vinayakar Nagar Phase 2 in Vellalore. He demanded that I come down to the station immediately.
I told him I would start. I reached Pothanur station around 11:20 AM.
Jagadeesh was already sitting there, accompanied by another guy I had never seen before. SI Gajendran sat behind his desk and asked me why the fuck I hadn't cleared out.
I tried to lay down the facts. Back in October or November 2025, Jagadeesh had told me I didn't need to vacate, so I stopped looking at other houses. On top of that, I had sunk my own money and labor into fixing up his place, sorting out broken plumbing, fixing patchy wiring, dealing with pest control, and making it livable. And even now, I was actively hunting for a new place.
Gajendran cut me off before I could finish.
"None of that matters," he said. "No one will appreciate those things. The owner wants the house, so you have to give it back. Finding a house is easy. You can get one in a week if you use brokers."
He pulled out a blank sheet of paper and ordered me to write an undertaking stating I would vacate within one month.
I sat down and started writing. I began writing the actual background of the situation, documenting the repairs and the prior verbal agreement.
I barely finished a paragraph before Gajendran snatched the paper right out of my hands.
"Don't write your version," he snapped. "Write only what I dictate."
He pushed another blank page toward me.
I refused. I told him straight: I was not going to write a statement that distorted reality. I told him I needed to talk to my wife first, since she handles our rent payments and household finances. I dialed her number, spoke to her briefly, and confirmed what I already knew. I looked at the SI and said I wouldn't sign his version.
That was when the uniform took over.
Gajendran exploded. He began barking at me across the desk, calling me lazy, raising his voice so everyone in the hallway could hear. Then came the explicit threats in Tamil:
"Sign panna mattiya. FIR pottu ukkara vechuruven. Sign pannama eppadi veetukku porana paakuren." (You won't sign? I'll file an FIR and sit you right here in a cell. Let me see how you leave for home without signing.)
He leaned in further:
"Ippove veetla irukkara porul ellam eduthu veliya poda sollutta?" (Shall I call someone right now to throw all your things out onto the street?)
After shouting, he gestured at Jagadeesh and his buddy to step out of the room. They walked out, leaving me alone in the room with him.
He kept me sitting on that bench for over an hour. Over sixty minutes of isolation, threat of an immediate FIR, threat of jail, and threat of having my furniture tossed on the road. When you are sitting in a police station with an anxious mind and three men in uniform staring you down, the legal system feels like a myth invented by people who have never been intimidated by state power.
I broke. I gave in.
The moment I agreed to sign, Gajendran's tone flipped completely. The aggression disappeared. He became calm, almost hospitable. He even offered me a glass of water.
He pulled out a third sheet of paper and dictated the text word for word. He changed the timeline from one month to two months. He made me write that the landlord had been asking me to vacate for four months, that I promised to clear out within two months, and that if I failed to vacate by then, I would accept whatever action the police decided to take against me.
I wrote what he wanted, signed it, and walked out into the sunlight.
It was a purely civil tenancy matter. No crime had been committed, no property damaged, no violence threatened. Yet the state apparatus was weaponized in broad daylight to extract a forced confession of compliance for a property owner who didn't want to bother with the Rent Court.
That signature was not given by free consent. It was extracted under threat of lockup and illegal eviction. I am putting the record down here so it exists.
_Image Credit: Scene of the Tribunal (The Verdict) by Honoré Daumier via Wikimedia Commons*