Santosh Pandit: The Civic Activist Who Turned Potholes Into a Public Question and Landed in Jail
From exposing broken roads and civic failures to facing criminal allegations over social-media posts, Pandit's arrest has raised questions about free expression, police procedure and the limits of online criticism Pune: For years, Santosh Gajanan Pandit built his public identity around a deceptively simple idea: point a camera at problems that citizens had learned to live with. A pothole. A damaged road. A broken drain. An alleged traffic violation. A civic project he believed had been poorly executed. Pandit recorded them, confronted officials and public representatives, posted the encounters online and, in some cases, returned repeatedly until the issue received attention. His approach turned ordinary civic complaints into highly visible social-media content. Now, the 48-year-old Pune activist and content creator is in judicial custody in connection with cases concerning allegedly obscene, sexually suggestive, abusive and defamatory content posted online. A Pune court re...