It wasn’t very surprising then that for a week no one should have bothered about his disappearance. He was known to go away to the city for two or three days without telling his wives. As in the past, they assumed he had been called away on urgent business. After a week they became anxious and started going round to other homes asking the women to find out from their menfolk if they had seen Jhimma Singh. When no one came forth with any news of him for another week, the anxiety changed to alarm and a report was lodged at the police station by one of the tenants at the urging of Jhimma Singh’s first wife. It mentioned the enmity of his brothers and their previous attempts to murder him. Once again the brothers were arrested, interrogated, and beaten up. Nothing came of it. No corpse, no case. They were set at liberty. The Police Commissioner was notified that the most trusted informer in the district had disappeared—probably murdered by one of his many relations and no trace could be found of either the victim or the murderer. The Commissioner sent the file to the Deputy Commissioner to have the case closed as ‘untraced’. He was a little surprised to find that instead of the usual words ‘Seen. File,’ with the illegible initials, there was an order asking him to come over to discuss the case. What followed startled the Police Commissioner.

The Deputy Commissioner handed the Police Commissioner a warrant to search the house of Sardar Buta Singh, the seniormost Indian magistrate of the district. He gave him another one, to arrest Sher Singh. Taylor refused to disclose his source of information. All he said was: ‘Be gentle to the old man. I suggest you send him over to see me and then search the house. You may find something. In any case, take his son to the police station and give him the works. Get some of your tough Anglo-Indian sergeants to handle him. It will not be hard to make him talk.’