PATNA: When Wu Tiandong (34), an employee of a Chinese cellphone manufacturing firm, started his journey for India from Hubei in China, he would have never thought of landing in jail where the authorities are providing him with hakka noodles and boiled vegetables as food.Tiandong was arrested by Patna police following the recovery of a sealed bottle of 180ml Nepalese liquor and an empty India-made foreign liquor (IMFL) from his flat 203-B of Ahmed Enclave at Ali Nagar under the Gardanibagh police station area on June 17 this year. Another IMFL bottle was recovered from flat 201-B in which another Chinese national, Wu Chuangyong Sichuan, was living. He is absconding. Several flats in the enclave were used as guesthouse by the cellphone firm for its Chinese officials. At least nine Chinese nationals were living there when Patna police conducted a raid.“Tiandong’s visa, which was issued on December 22 last year, expired on June 21, just four days before his arrest,” a senior police officer said.Jail sources said Tiandong was being provided with hakka noodles and boiled vegetables as food. “The main reason for providing him food according to his wish is that he can’t eat spicy Indian food generally served in jail,” said a prison and correctional services officer, preferring anonymity.“Apart from noodles and boiled vegetables, he sometimes eats plain rice or bread,” sources said, adding all his food items were being cooked at a canteen in the jail.The sources said one of his family members met him with an interpreter on a few occasions in the jail. “It was his interpreter, who told us what kind of food Tiandong eats and how to cook such items,” sources said, adding Tiandong is kept in the vigilance ward which houses only those who are accused in graft cases and arrested by vigilance sleuths.Sources said he was the first foreign national to be arrested in Bihar for violation of prohibition law and his arrest had become a serious issue between the Indian and Chinese authorities. An official from consulate-general of China in Kolkata, Wang Lifeng, had also met senior police officials in Patna to take stock of the case. Tiandong’s bail has already been rejected by a lower court in Patna and he might have to spend some more weeks inside the jail.

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