"Just like the Orlando killer Omar Mateen, my father N Srinivasan too is wracked with guilt over his own gay past. He is transfer-projecting that on us and hence his homophobia takes on a rarely seen venality," Ashwin told dna.
Emboldened by the churn over LGBTQ rights in India since a closeted homosexual gunned down 49 people early on Sunday at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Ashwin Srinivasan and his gay partner Avi Mukherjee have renewed efforts for freedom from what they call forced house arrest and torture by his father, former chairman of the International Cricket Council and former president of the BCCI, the governing body for cricket in India.
"Just like the Orlando killer Omar Mateen, my father N Srinivasan too is wracked with guilt over his own gay past. He is transfer-projecting that on us and hence his homophobia takes on a rarely seen venality," Ashwin told dna.
dna had front-paged a report on May 21, 2012, where Ashwin had charged his father of homophobically unleashing a cycle of violence against him and Mukherjee to 'cure' them of homosexuality. Later, Ashwin had again told dna of the connections of his brother-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan ("team principal" of IPL cricket franchise Chennai Super Kings, who was implicated in the 2013 Indian Premier League spot-fixing and betting case and banned for life) with well-known bookies from Chennai and Dubai on May 24, 2014.
Ashwin alleged that soon after he spoke to dna, his mother Chitra and father N Srinivasan worked closely with the doctor to get heroin administered to both him and his partner. "Later, they reduced the drug intake and made it irregular. Avi and I started experiencing heightened stress and hypersensitivity, sleeplessness, anxiety, couldn't even hold on to a thought for longer than a minute. Dr Khanna, who we were seeing, wouldn't let us on to why this was happening and we finally looked it up on the net to find that we were suffering from Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome."
Chitra then, her son said, told the duo to come to Chennai and undergo detox. "Because she promised we'll be allowed to move to the country of our choice without any interference from the family in two months when we were completely out of rehab, we agreed to go and were flown down to Chennai in August 2014."
They were first shifted to a serviced apartment called Absolute Home in Kotturpuram. "My mother said they were on the lookout for another place for us near our family home. She told us that taking us back to our family home will lead to embarrassment in front of the servants."
In September, they were shifted to a tony apartment owned by Arun Murugappa of the Murugappa group at the Avenue neighbourhood of Boat Club near Ashwin's parent's residence. Incidentally, Ashwin and Mukherjee have found papers suggesting that the house was leased to Sumita Adam, Tony Adam of Adam & Coal Resources.
"We're being held captive against our will and tortured by my father who wants me to break up with Avi, get married and have children to further the family line," he told dna. "Two months have now become two years, we've been given death threats and fear for our lives. Our passports and other documents of identity have all been taken away and we've been told not to step out."
Mukherjee pointed out, "Ashwin's parents are well-connected dollar billionaires. We have found efforts by us to reach out to authorities in Chennai and Delhi have all been frustrated by them. Forget legal help, even doctors have refused to treat us."
According to him, he still suffers from a broken clavicle and pain in the foot from April 30, 2012, when the police picked up the couple from an upmarket Bandra restaurant-pub, Escobar, and brutally beat them with iron rods and sticks.
dna tried reaching out to N Srinivasan and Chitra, who are currently in New York, for comment, but they remained unreachable.
Aswin and Mukherjee have now written to the world's largest coalition of NGOs fighting against arbitrary detention, torture, summary and extrajudicial executions, forced disappearances and other forms of violence, Organisation Mondiale contre la Torture, Geneva, Switzerland, for help. "We're hoping that they will be able to intervene and help us out of our predicament."
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