Have you been nailed before? Didn’t understand? Ok. Have you suffered a flat tyre because of a random nail on the road? Perhaps. Have you suffered a flat tyre a number of times on the same road, and coincidentally near a puncture repairer? Yes, if you are a regular 
commuter on the ORR, Bangalore. If so, you are victim of the nail mafia.
The nail mafia operates in the tech corridor Central Silk Board and Marathalli. Techies are often seen pushing their two wheelers to the nearest repair shop or trying to replace their deflated wheel with the spare one.
One techie, decided that these coincidences could not be just coincidences and there must be something more. He bent down to search for the nails on the road, first with his bare hands and then with his son’s school magnet and finally with a big magnet that he purchased at a scrap store as the number of nails that he found next to puncture repair shops merited more than a large magnet – there were so many of the same type, indicating that it was not a random appearance but a deliberate attempt to sabotage commuters, forcing them to approach the nearest tyre repair shop and shell out money.
He is now the (unfortunately not the ‘proud’ sort) owner of 1.5 kg of similar-looking nails which he hopes to present to the police as proof to nail the, well, nail mafia. Till date, he has combed the 6 km Outer Ring Road (ORR) stretch four times!
He maintained a diary of his travails called ‘Nail Chronicles’. His diary speaks of his initial struggles with the contrived accidents, and his eventual kick-off of a campaign to clean up the road himself.
Benedict Jebakumar, a systems engineer at a tech company on ORR, is the author of the nail chronicles. His effort to prevent flat tyres helped him discover the similarity between the nails and the proximity of the nails to the repair shops. He went online to the cops, but the only answer he got was – we will look into it.
Jebakumar now keeps 1.5 kg of nails in his office, segregated by date, and hopes the cops will take cognizance of it. He doesn’t really mind if people laugh at him, because according to him it is better than pushing a bike after a puncture.
Many commuters suffer the agony of pushing their vehicles only to find the same type of nails and then have to replace their tubes at double the orginal cost as it is often late at night and the location is such that commuters have no option but to cough up.
