"This is not a story of some event from history; it is a story of today's India, today's Asia,"writes Basil Fernando, Executive Director of the Asian Human Rights Commission, in the foreword. "Across the region, huge numbers of innocent people suffer the cruelest forms of torture and death in custody, and thousands are forcibly disappeared. Most victims do not have a father as educated and vocal as the boy remembered in this book. His story is also the story of the thousands of others whose pain and suffering have never been made public."

Throughout the book, Professor Varier vividly portrays the social and legal breakdown that led to the mass arrests and extrajudicial killings of the time as a backdrop against which his own personal tragedy is intimately and thoroughly explored.