Killer publicity

A few days ago, the front page of a newspaper had a story on how, for the first time, two brothers (both IPS officers of the 1973 batch) were heading two different paramilitary organisations. While the elder brother, Raman Srivastava, was appointed the director general of the Border Security Force last August, the younger brother, Vikram, was made director general of the Central Industrial Security Force a few days ago. This made someone who had been bypassed as the head of one of the two organisations look up the age of the two brothers — to his surprise, while the elder brother had listed his date of birth as October 24, 1951, the younger had recorded the same as March 18, 1952. Doubts about the authenticity of the dates have been raised in a petition that is before the home minister.