19 days in jail, 'stole' police chair and deportation: Japanese student’s Bengaluru story

BENGALURU: When Japanese student Hirotoshi Tanaka came to Bengaluru in 2019, he had one simple plan — to learn English, experience life in India and eventually return to his parents in Yaizu city, Shizuoka, Japan.Instead, his journey took him from a police station to Bengaluru Central Prison, then to the Karnataka high court, the Karnataka State Human Rights Commission and eventually a detention centre before he was deported to Japan in April 2021.Nearly seven years after arriving in the city, Tanaka has now received Rs 75,000 in compensation from the Karnataka government after the human rights commission held that he had been unnecessarily kept in judicial custody for 19 days.But perhaps the most unusual chapter of his long legal battle came in the early hours of February 28, 2021, when Tanaka walked into the office of the JC Nagar assistant commissioner of police in RT Nagar, picked up a white…