C-Form

The C-Form is the foreign-guest register that Bombay hotels were required to supply to the police. By requiring a valid visa entry for every foreign guest’s name and passport number, it turned hotel registration into a point of enforcement for immigration rules. For Lin, whose tourist visa had expired, the register made an ordinary stay in a hotel legally precarious.

Registration and Enforcement

A C-Form entry had to match a foreign guest’s passport details and valid visa. Police supervised the registers vigilantly, and overstaying was a serious offence in India: it could bring a prison term of up to two years. The rules also exposed hotel operators to heavy fines for allowing irregular entries. The form therefore implicated both guest and host in the same regulatory system.

Anand’s Intervention

When Anand signed Lin into the hotel, he fudged the figures in his register despite knowing Lin’s visa had expired. He explained the risk and advised Lin to go immediately to the Foreigner Registration Branch at police headquarters to seek an extension. Anand was willing to bend the rules once because he liked Lin, who was the first foreigner he had met who spoke Marathi with him; his warning made clear that the favor did not remove Lin’s underlying legal problem.

Lin’s Predicament

Lin had little money and had begun earning commissions by connecting foreign visitors with black-market dealers, but that work could not reliably support a life in hotels or pay for a flight out of India. More urgently, he could not risk approaching the Foreigner Registration Branch: an inquiry into his expired visa might endanger his freedom. Yet without valid visa status he could not continue staying in Bombay hotels. The C-Form thus marked the narrowing passage between regulation and fugitive life: Anand’s altered entry bought Lin temporary shelter, but did not provide a safe way to regularize his status or remain.