When the head constable arrived with his party, there was quite a crowd assembled under the peepul tree near the temple.

The head constable unlocked the handcuffs of the prisoners in front of the villagers. They were made to put their thumb impressions on pieces of paper and told to report to the police station twice a week. The villagers looked on sullenly. They knew that Jugga budmash and the stranger had nothing to do with the dacoity. They were equally certain that in arresting Malli’s gang the police were on the right track. Perhaps they were not all involved; some of the five might have been arrested mistakenly. It was scarcely possible that none of them had had anything to do with it. Yet there were the police letting them loose—not in their own village, but in Mano Majra where they had committed the murder. The police must be certain of their innocence to take such a risk.

The head constable took the lambardar aside and the two spoke to each other for some time. The lambardar came back and addressed the villagers saying: ‘The Sentry Sahib wants to know if anyone here has seen or heard anything about Sultana budmash or any of his gang.’

Several villagers came out with news. He was known to have gone away to Pakistan along with his gang. They were all Muslims, and Muslims of their village had been evacuated.

‘Was it before or after the murder of the Lala that he left?’ inquired the head constable, coming up beside the lambardar.

‘After,’ they answered in a chorus. There was a long pause. The villagers looked at each other somewhat puzzled. Was it them? Before they could ask the policemen any questions, the head constable was speaking again.

‘Did any of you see or talk to a young Mussulman babu called Mohammed Iqbal who was a member of the Muslim League?’

The lambardar was taken aback. He did not know Iqbal was a Muslim. He vaguely recalled Meet Singh and Imam Baksh calling him Iqbal Singh. He looked in the crowd for Imam Baksh but could not find him. Several villagers started telling the head constable excitedly of having seen Iqbal go to the fields and loiter about the railway track near the bridge.

‘Did you notice anything suspicious about him?’

‘Suspicious? Well . . . ’

‘Did you notice anything suspicious about the fellow?’

‘Did you?’

No one was sure. One could never be sure about educated people; they were all suspiciously cunning. Surely Meet Singh was the one to answer questions about the babu; some of the babu’s things were still with him in the gurudwara.

Meet Singh was pushed up to the front.

The head constable ignored Meet Singh and again addressed the group that had been answering him. ‘I will speak to the bhai later, he said. ‘Can any one of you say whether this man came to Mano Majra before or after the dacoity?’