Opinion: Blog | 'Baap Da Brat': Kerala Mini Cooper Deaths, And Why India's 'Daddy' Syndrome Needs To Go

There are three things you should never underestimate in India: the power of 'jugaad', the elasticity of the law, and the confidence of a 'Baap da Brat' who believes his 'Papa Posh' can fix absolutely anything. The first two are national assets. The third is a national hazard.

Meet India's favourite entitled brat. Designer sunglasses, a luxury car, an influential surname, and the emotional maturity of an unpaid electricity bill. He's never heard the word 'no' without immediately calling someone who can make it a 'yes'. He believes traffic rules are for the poor, queues are for the powerless, and consequences are what happen to other people's children. His favourite sentence is not "I'm sorry for my f*ck-up." It's "Jaanta hai mera baap kaun hai?" (do you even know who my dad is?)

But, does he know who his father is? Of course he does. Because that's literally ... the only identity he'll ever have. And so ... Suhail Sajeev. 19-years-old. Speeding in his Mini Cooper. A birthday present from Mamta Maa. Crashes into a scooter near Kochi airport. Devika, Gopika, and Ijaz. Dead. Suhail: "No worries, Daddy will take care of it."

So, Suhail murders three people. No shock. No concern. No remorse. No apology. Just an easy escape plan. Lots of entitlement. 

We should be infuriated. But we have watched this movie before. And now we've become numb to the sequels. In May 2024, a Porsche driven by 17-year-old Vedant Agarwal killed two engineers in Pune. Vedant, the son of a prominent real-estate developer, was granted bail on the condition that he write a 300-word essay on road accidents.

(The Pune Porsche that killed two in May 2024. It was being driven by 17-year-old Vedant Agarwal)

Two innocent people's lives were worth an extracurricular activity.

Someone suggested replacing criminal courts with English tuition classes. Run someone over? Write an essay. Cause a public scandal? Submit a book report. Destroy two families? Add a bibliography. Because accountability looks astonishingly different depending on who's involved, and money makes consequences easier to escape.

Consider Mihir Shah, the son of a political figure, mowing down Kaveri Nakhwa with his BMW. Or Sanjiv Nanda, who ran over six people in Delhi. These cases became emblematic of public anxiety about wealth and influence in the justice system, where the family name enters the room before the victim's name does.

For the privileged, a murder can become a public relations exercise. A lawyer is called. A statement is drafted. A driver may be offered as a substitute. The family closes ranks. The outrage is waited out. Eventually, the news cycle moves on, and life resumes in the gated community.

For everyone else, the machinery of survival is less luxurious. There are lost wages, mounting medical bills, police station visits, legal uncertainty, and the crushing realisation that the person responsible may have access to resources the victim cannot even imagine. Unless they use social media. But a family should not have to become famous on social media to have its loss taken seriously. Justice cannot depend on whether a tragedy trends.

The difference is also not that one family loves its child more. It's that one family can afford to turn accountability into a prolonged negotiation. The problem isn't also that every rich child is entitled or that every wealthy parent is irresponsible. Money doesn't automatically make someone immoral. But money can make bad behaviour more dangerous. It can buy access to powerful lawyers, prolong litigation, influence public narratives, and provide a cushion against consequences that would overwhelm an ordinary family.

We celebrate the father who buys his teenager a luxury car but seldom ask whether he has taught him responsibility. We applaud the mother who fights the school principal over a bad grade, but rarely the parent who lets a child face the consequences of his laziness. We measure parenting in birthday parties, foreign holidays, branded sneakers, and expensive educational institutions, as though character were another product available on an EMI.

Papa Posh calls them confident. Mamta Maa calls them misunderstood. Their schools call them bright. Their friends call them sorted. The rest of us call them a public liability. We are raising children to believe they are the main characters in a universe populated by supporting cast members. The security guard is an obstacle. The waiter is an accessory. The traffic police are an inconvenience. The person crossing the road is so extra.

The 'No' Brats Never Hear

Sadly, this elitist culture is not confined to the super-rich. In his 2016 essay, "Bharat Mata's Brats: The Gratification Syndrome", Salil Desai examined the wider tendency of all parents to indulge children and shield them from responsibility. The common denominator is not wealth alone. It is the belief that love means ensuring a child never has to hear no.

And because Indian society is obsessed with parental achievement, we rarely ask the question that matters: what exactly have you achieved if your child grows up believing that money can purchase immunity from morality?

The same principle applies everywhere. Public institutions are not private concierge services. The police are not a family's personal security team. Courts are not customer-care departments. And the law is not a premium membership programme with complimentary exemptions for high-net-worth individuals. At least, it should not be.

We must also resist the temptation to turn public anger into mob justice. The answer to privilege evading the law cannot be violence outside the law. Every accused person deserves due process. But due process must mean that the law follows the evidence, not the family tree.

Let us ask whether India can become a country where a person's worth is measured by what they do, not by whom they can call. Where the child of a billionaire and the child of a bus driver are equally accountable for reckless behaviour. Where the wealthy can hire the best lawyers but cannot purchase a different set of laws. Where parents understand that the most valuable inheritance they can leave their children is not a fortune, but the ability to distinguish right from wrong when nobody is watching.

And where the most frightening sentence a young man can utter is no longer, "Daddy will take care of it," but "I'm sorry for my f*ck up."

Because the real tragedy of the Baap da Brat is not that he believes his father can save him. It is that nobody taught him anything else.

(Meghna Pant is an award-winning author, journalist, and speaker whose books have been widely acclaimed and are being adapted for the screen)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author