Shot in the act: the first casualty of "urinal rage"

A 22-year-old Indian guy was shot this weekend for pissing in public, according to a report from the staid old BBC.   

Nope, this isn't some newfangled interpretation of Shariah law, or a draconian new manifestation of India's usual liberal (and tortuous) legal system.  It was plain old "urinal rage."

Delhi has road rage, bus rage, queue rage, heat rage, post office rage, even chicken rage (well, actually, that happens in the "hill station" of Shimla, which tends to run out of the best-beloved bird when the Punjabis ascend on the place).  But as far as I know, this is the first incident of urinal rage in this usually piss-tolerant city, about which one of my fondest memories remains a drunken slash taken on some unsuspecting basement-dweller's window before a huge meal of egg paranthas on a midnight, post-bar run to Delhi's Fleet Street.

Maybe Himanshu Sharma was a casualty of the Home Minister's call for Delhi-ites to curb their rude behavior before the Commonwealth Games next year--an inevitably disastrous event that seems to me to be the country-sized equivalent of David Letterman's confession.  I don't know.  But you have to feel for the guy.

Here's the Beeb: "Correspondents say spitting and urinating in public is a common sight across India.  The culprits are almost always men but this is the first time that someone has been killed for urinating in public."

Huh?

What's the logic of that last sentence?  What does the culprits being men have to do with somebody getting shot?  Are we meant to infer that this should have happened a long time ago, because it was so unfair to women?  Is there some hint that this was militant feminism gone even more militant?

Not so.  Apparently, Himanshu and his buds were eating some snacks in their car (a favorite place to consume whiskey in Delhi, notwithstanding the laws against drunk driving) when Himanshu got out to drain the main vein.  The owner of the petrol pump (i.e. gas station) where they'd parked registered his objections.  (The exact phrases he used were not included in the article).  Then things "escalated."

So far, neither Amnesty International nor Human Rights Watch have issued a statement.

http://www.globalpost.com/notebook/india/091003/shot-the-act-the-first-casualty-urinal-rage