"Slumdog" Child Star's Mumbai
                          Shanty Home Torn Down

Reuters
May 14, 2009

MUMBAI - City authorities in Mumbai demolished the shanty home of a "Slumdog Millionaire" child star on Thursday, forcing his family into the streets months after the Oscar-winning film shot him to global fame.

Azharuddin Ismail, 9, played the character of Salim as a child in the film, a rags-to-riches romance about a poor Indian boy competing for love and money on a television game show.

Ismail's tarpaulin-covered home in a teeming slum was one of several shanties, illegally built along a drain, that were demolished by local authorities in Mumbai, India's financial capital and entertainment hub.

"When they came I was sleeping, they shook me awake and one policeman even threatened me," Ismail, surrounded by half-broken suitcases filled with clothes and utensils, told Reuters.

"What can I do if they have demolished my house? I will sleep out in the open."

A poster of "Slumdog Millionaire," signed by director Danny Boyle, fluttered from the only wall of Ismail's shanty still standing. Open sewers run nearby and it had no running water.

Authorities said the shanties had been demolished earlier but had sprung up again on the same spot.

"The shanties are all touching a drain that has to be cleaned before the advent of the monsoons," said U.D. Mistry, the local official in charge of the demolition drive.

Earlier this year, there was an outcry after pictures emerged of "Slumdog Millionaire's" child stars living in squalor despite the movie's box-office success and eight Academy Awards.

The film also sparked controversy for its name, deemed by some to be offensive to slum dwellers, and its treatment of the cast. Its depiction of the lives of poor Indians was dubbed "poverty porn" by sections of the media.

In February, the housing authority of Maharashtra state, of which Mumbai is the capital, said they would give Ismail and fellow child star Rubina Ali new houses. But Ismail's mother, Shameem, said the family is now at the mercy of the rains.

"We also heard that the government had promised us houses, but what happened? We are still homeless," she said. "My son has brought glory to the country, shouldn't he get some credit?"

(Writing by Tony Tharakan; Editing by Matthias

Associate Says He Was Fired for Refusing
to Destroy Evidence of Kiddie Porn on Client's Computer

By Robert J. Ambrogi
Legal Blog Watch
May 1, 2003

A former associate with Hinckley, Allen & Snyder in Boston claims he was fired from the firm after refusing to destroy child pornography found on a client's computer hard drive. This week, the former associate, Kevin M. Plante, won a decision from the Massachusetts Appeals Court reinstating his wrongful-termination lawsuit against the firm, after a trial court judge had dismissed his suit for the reason that it would expose client confidences.

You will not be able to read the opinion for yourself. The Appeals Court impounded the opinion and issued it with a pseudonymous caption. But David E. Frank, a reporter for Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly in Boston, obtained a copy of it and confirmed the identities of the former associate and the firm. In a story published on MLW's Web site yesterday, Frank provides details of the case.

Plante would not disclose where he now works and was reluctant to discuss the case, Frank writes, but he did provide some details. Plante does not say how the illegal images were discovered. Once they were, he tells Frank, he advised the partners that they were legally obligated to report the materials to law enforcement. He explains:

<1> If a person came to you as a lawyer and said, "Here is the illegally possessed gun that I killed so and so with," you can't just put it in your desk and call it privileged. It couldn't be clearer under federal and state law that you cannot possess those kinds of images. By doing so, the client and the firm would be guilty of possessing child pornography.

The firm sought advice from outside counsel, who concurred with Plante, he says. Even so, the partners instructed him to find a company that could permanently erase the images from the computer, he maintains. When the partners discovered in 2006 that Plante did not do as he was told, they fired him, he contends. Plante answered his termination by reporting the firm to the FBI and then, in 2007, filing this lawsuit.

In reversing the dismissal of Plante's lawsuit, the Appeals Court concluded that the suit could go forward without the need to reveal client confidences. "To the extent that the case does revolve around the details of the images, we note that to a large degree, protective orders already in place serve to safeguard the law firm's client," the court said. "No business information, trade secrets, or other information from which it could be possible to identify the client need be revealed in order to proceed with the plaintiff's claim."