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NY police manhandle Indian on Broadway

Aseem Chhabra in New York

For his second wedding anniversary Uday Menon wanted to take his wife out for dinner and a Broadway show on October 10.

He wanted to see The Producers, the hit Broadway musical based on Mel Brooks' classic film and winner of 12 Tony awards. But the show was sold out until April 2002, and so Menon settled for a Cole Porter musical, Kiss Me Kate, winner of five Tony awards.

The plan was that Menon, a 46 year-old consultant with J P Morgan, and his wife Surekha Collur, a physician at a Brooklyn hospital, would go out to eat at Mirchi, a new Indian restaurant in Greenwich Village, and then make it in time to catch the show at the Martin Beck Theatre, at 45th Street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue.

What Menon did not know was that, based on the suspicion of the Telecharge operator, the telephone service that sold him the tickets, there were four New York City police officers waiting at the theatre to nab him. When the couple arrived on the scene, the officers, fearing that Menon was a terrorist who was about to blow up the theatre, pounced on him, handcuffed him and dragged him into the street outside the theatre, while his seven-months pregnant wife watched in horror.

"The woman (the Telecharge operator) was very friendly," Menon said, recalling his October 9 call to the agency. "I can't remember anything strange or out of the ordinary in the conversation. She seemed to have all the time in the world."

As Menon remembers, when he learnt that The Producers was sold out for the next several months, the Telecharge operator herself volunteered to read through a list of Broadway shows along with brief synopses for each event. When they settled on Kiss Me Kate, the operator first offered him $90 orchestra seats. Eventually Menon bought two $65 tickets in the mezzanine, which partially hangs over the orchestra.

The rest of the conversation between Menon and the operator would seem insignificant to anyone who has ever bought tickets on the phone. Menon inquired about the number of rows between his seats and the stage. He then gave his credit card number and the operator asked him for the expiry date as well as his mailing address.

"I never asked whether the theatre was going to be full, because I didn't care about it," Menon said. "All I wanted to know was whether the show was popular and whether the tickets were available. She finally said 'Enjoy the show' and told me that the tickets would be waiting for me the next day at the box office."

On October 10, Menon and Collur reached the Martin Beck Theatre at 7.55pm. The lobby was empty as most people were already inside the auditorium for the 8pm show. While Collur got busy looking at the show posters and reading newspaper reviews, Menon walked up to the box-office window. When Menon gave his last name, the woman behind the window asked him to step aside. And within seconds the four officers, three of them in plain clothes, were all over Menon.

"Suddenly I felt my hands being grabbed from behind, my legs being grabbed and I think I was carried off the floor," he said. He was then dragged about half a block away from the theatre towards Eighth Avenue.

"You feel really impotent," Menon said about being handcuffed. "It didn't hurt, but you can't move your arms at all. You can't do anything. It happened so fast. I kept asking them what the hell was going on? There were people gathered and they were watching."

"My first thought when they grabbed me was this was some mistaken identity problem. I thought maybe I fit some terrorist's profile. But at no point did I think that it had anything to do with my conversation on the previous day."

To establish credibility with the officers, Menon mentioned that his wife was with him.

"So one of them mocked me and said: 'Oh ya? And where is your wife'?"

Just then the visibly pregnant Collur came out of the theatre looking for her husband. And as the men frisked Menon and began to look through his wallet, Collur offered them her identity cards as well.

"By then they had realised that this was a big mistake, since I had nothing on me. But even at that point one of them threatened me in his Brooklyn accent and said: 'Don't get uppity with me now. I can put you away'."

"The guy at the receiving end has to have some anger. I couldn't be a saint. And they threatened to put me away."

It was then that the officers told Menon that the Telecharge operator had reported him to the police. The operator's report to the police said she believed that Menon did not care which play he saw, as long as it was a crowded theatre and he sat in the middle of the hall. Her interpretation: Menon, with his foreign name and accent, was going to blow up the theatre.

"And I said 'What? What the **** was she talking about'?"

The officers, all from the Midtown Precinct South, asked Menon what he remembered from the prior day's conversation and then called the Telecharge operator to check her story.

Eventually, they removed Menon's handcuffs and let him go. They did not apologise, but the one dressed in uniform told him that he had been nervous reporting to work that day.

"He was on a theatre beat and said: 'You are afraid? Well, I was also afraid. I was afraid that my five-month-old daughter would not see her father tonight. I was supposed to grab you from behind and if you had an explosive, I may have blown up with you. These were the thoughts going through my mind'," said Menon.

The police officer then escorted the couple to the theatre to pick up their tickets. The man behind the window was much more apologetic and informed Menon that their tickets were on the house. The couple was ushered in and seated in the orchestra section.

During the intermission, the house manager Carmel Gunther walked up to them and again offered her apologies.

"She said, 'I believe it is your wedding anniversary and that you actually wanted to see The Producers. We can certainly arrange for you to see The Producers. Would you like to see it tomorrow?' And I said no, not tomorrow."

But Menon did accept Gunther's offer. On November 6, he and Collur will see Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick in The Producers, courtesy the Martin Beck Theatre.

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