Japanese national who ‘stole’ chair to seek justice deported

BENGALURU: Hirotoshi Tanaka, a Japanese student who was placed at a detention centre for more than a month, was deported to Japan on Friday. The development comes after he sought to make an appeal before Karnataka high court seeking justice. Upon reaching Japan, Tanaka told STOI that he wanted to leave India in a dignified manner, but cops prevented it.
Tanaka came to Bengaluru in 2019 to learn English. Later, he was confined after a ‘false’ case was filed against him. The high court quashed the FIR against him, but the Foreigners’ Regional Registration Office (FRRO) set February 28 as deadline for him to exit India.
In December 2020, he filed a complaint before Karnataka State Human Rights Commission against then RT Nagar police sub-inspector Hanumantharayappa (now retired) for demanding bribe to drop a case against him. While his visa expired, in March he stole a chair from the office of the JC Nagar ACP in RT Nagar, clicked selfies of his “crime” and took the “booty” to his BTM Layout house. Tanaka said he did all this because he wanted to expose the cop. However, the authorities had asked him to leave the country by February 28 and he thought the best way to stay back in India was to get arrested.
“I was at the detention centre from March 3 as I had been overstayed in India for three days, though my application for new exit permission had been under process for over two weeks,” said Tanaka.
“On Wednesday, I asked the FRRO to give me permission to meet a lawyer through a staff at the detention centre. Before I could think of any action, I was deported,” he added. Tanaka, who is the son of a cop in Japan, said that he was not happy with police in Bengaluru as they denied him his rights when he suffered injustice.