This book would not have been possible without the support of my family. I thank my wife, Neha, who is my fellow traveller in life, and our children, for bearing with my long hours at the laptop with a smile. I want to express my gratitude towards my late father, lawyer Tripurari Sharan Tatarvai, and my late grandfather, freedom fighter Krishna Chandra Prasad, who introduced me to the world of words, and my Ma, for their blessings and teachings. I am thankful to my niece, Aditi, for diligently proofreading the first draft and appreciating and criticizing it in equal measure. I thank my siblings, Jaya and Amit, and niece, Akansha, for their suggestions. I am grateful to all my contacts and friends in the police/security services from whom I have learned, and continue to learn, about crime and its ecosystem.

Abhishek Sharan

Mumbai, July 2021

1. ‘IF ANYONE MOVES, FIRE MAARO’

1

‘IF ANYONE MOVES, FIRE MAARO’

A sleek black mobile phone vibrated, a green light flickering in its top left corner. This was the third time the phone had buzzed in less than a minute. It glided a little to the left, then returned to its original position on top of a dark-brown coffee table made of sheesham wood. The table occupied the centre of the living room – a large space with white walls and black doors – in police officer Shekhar Singh’s official residence in New Delhi’s Lutyens’ zone. It was 9.54 p.m. on 26 November 2008.

Shekhar had returned home after a long thirteen-hour workday just a while earlier. He got out of his car, a white Honda City, at the gate, which faced a lush green park. His walk to the front door was slow, one step at a time.

Shekhar rang the bell and was happy to see Anjali, his wife, when she opened the door. She was a professor in the English department at a well-known city college. Shekhar, forty-five, was of a dark complexion and six feet tall with a wiry frame.

‘You seem tired. Was it another stormy day in the office?’ Anjali asked. ‘I have heated up water in the bathroom. You can have a hot shower, which will wash away the exhaustion. I’ll get dinner ready for both of us.’

‘Thanks, Anjali. Yes, it was a really hectic day at work. I had to do a lot of damage control as a project was in nosedive,’ Shekhar said.

‘You, of course, only talk in code, if at all. Only one of us gets that code and that’s not me,’ Anjali laughed.

Shekhar laughed too, patted Anjali on the cheek and headed to the washroom.

Two minutes later, though, he rushed out, a towel wrapped around his waist. Anjali had knocked on the door to inform him that his colleague, Vinay Rathod, an assistant secretary, had been calling continuously to speak to him.