The Insider

IN the last few days Karan Bahree has become the face, though a reluctant one, of the outsourcing industry. It8217;s a face that reflects t...

IN the last few days Karan Bahree has become the face, though a reluctant one, of the outsourcing industry. It8217;s a face that reflects the troubled industry that makes 13 billion a year.

Last Thursday, British tabloid The Sun declared it had Bahree on camera, exchanging British banks8217; private information for Rs 3.4 lakh. The Sun says he got the information from call centres in Delhi.

Since then, Bahree has vanished, but the call centres haven8217;t rested. The papers flash his pictures, the tabloids feast on him and every self-respecting blog underwrites India8217;s IT industry.

Even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has stepped in: On Wednesday, he wanted to know how the culprits are being booked and the alleged security loopholes in call centres plugged. These call centres, flagships for India8217;s equally well-to-do software exports, are taking a lot of the flack.

Bahree, still only 24, emerged briefly in a letter to his employers. In it he said he took the money, gave the CD to Sun8217;s reporters but says he doesn8217;t know what was on it. In fact, it wasn8217;t his CD at all, he claims; it belonged to an acquaintance, with whom he split the booty.

A vortex of allegations has spawned, turning Bahree into a foolish boy, the law enforcement into spectators, The Sun into an evil avenger for 8216;Benedict Arnold CEOs8217;. And call centres, which say Indian security is world class, into victims of racism or of vested interests. BPOs know trouble when they see it, and after dealing with the US, they sense a need to lie low.

In the ruckus, Bahree, a public-school boy brought up in Delhi, turned his cellphone off. Neighbours at his parent8217;s Dilshad Garden home say they haven8217;t spotted him for a while. Even his father won8217;t say where he is.

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The evasion may seem ridiculously easy, considering the storm Bahree has raised. But this hide-and-seek could, in fact, be Karan8217;s life8217;s work: At Infinity e-Search, a small Gurgaon-based web design firm not call centre he was on probation for

Rs 10,000 a month. It fired him without notice on Tuesday, not convinced by his desperate letter. On weekends, Bahree8217;s closest ally was a gentleman who runs a PCO next door to his home.

In all this, where does a CD wielding 1,000 bank customer8217;s names, passwords and PIN numbers fit in? The closest anyone has got to an answer is: Palika Bazaar, Nehru Place and Janak Puri.

In one of these buzzing marketplaces, frothing with everything from the contraband to the unusual, someone picked up the troublesome CD and Bahree handed it to the sleuths from The Sun. This much is indicated by a public interest litigation PIL filed before the Delhi government on June 28.

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The PIL follows up on an eight-month-old legal battle against illegal call centres that allegedly compromise the outsourcing industry. It is the only formal complaint in the Bahree case.

It could be8212;though that does not excuse Bahree8217;s role8212;that he thought he was pulling a fast one on his UK 8216;clients,8217; by peddling a relatively easy to find CD for big money. If that was the case, then The Sun missed the bigger story.