In places as remote as Halepete in Bagalgot, psychic problems are still believed to be the handiwork of evil spirits. The cure is get the victim beaten up, chained, have his hair twisted and nailed on trees. Adam was subjected to all this. But the `evil spirit' in him refused to come out. The result: He has been chained for almost 15 years by his embarrassed family and sometimes, even by the police.

People say Adam, who used to roam the streets of Bijapur, used to harass people and molest women. Some even believe that he killed a couple of men. No one is sure, though.

Though manacled by fate, Adam still seems to remember excerpts from his checkered past. He mumbles his wife Amina's and daughter Husainbi's names when asked, while trying to light a beedi at the same time. Distracted memories seem to haunt Adam, now 43, who once owned aflourishing sheep business.

But for the past 15 years, he has been roaming the streets of Bijapur in shackles. The nightmare continued till a Bangalore-based weekly reported the strange behaviour of this man. Following this article, a Kannadiga settled in Chennai, S Vidyakar, received a letter from one T V Anantha Padmanabhan who informed him of a ``case in Bijapur''.

Soon, Vidyakar, who runs Udavum Karangal, a non-profit organisation in Chennai for rehabilitating the destitute, decided to go to Bijapur to find out more about the case. He reached Bijapur on Thursday, only to learn from the police that Adam had been put in a train bound for Bagalkot (140 km away), his native town.

Vidyakar, with local help, traced Adam to one of the remotest villages of Bagalkot Halepete, where he was under the care of his three brothers. ``We had a tough time convincing his brothers that we could take care of him. We even had to seek help from the police,'' said Vidyakar, who is also a psychologist and a post-graduatein Social Works and Law. Adam, who suffers from mood swings, had to be given a dose of sedatives by Vidyakar to calm him down. Vidyakar succeeded to get a letter of consent from his brothers, allowing him to take Adam for treatment to Chennai.

For Vidyakar, this was just another case of neglect, found increasingly in the rural districts of South India. Although his brothers had been told by doctors at NIMHANS, Bangalore, that Adam was suffering from Manic Depressive Psychosis, (the patient being prone to swings of extreme excitement to depression), nothing was done to treat him.

What worsened his state further was the dangerous and unscientific customs followed by villagers to treat psychic patients. The severe scarring of Adam's body bears testimony to the way he has been physically tortured in the name of treatment.