This was another shock. What would an urban babu have to do with dacoity or murder? Maybe it was not for money after all! No one was quite sure. Now they were not sure of anything. The head constable dismissed the meeting with: ‘If anyone has any authentic information about the moneylender’s murder or about Sultana or about Mohammed Iqbal, report at the police station at once.’

The crowd broke into small groups, talking and gesticulating animatedly. Meet Singh went up to the head constable who was getting his constables ready to march back.

‘Sentry Sahib, the young man you arrested the other day is not a Mussulman. He is a Sikh—Iqbal Singh.’

The head constable took no notice of him. He was busy writing something on a piece of yellow paper. Meet Singh waited patiently.

‘Sentry Sahib,’ he started again as the other was folding the paper. The head constable did not even look at him. He beckoned one of the constables and handed him the paper saying:

‘Get a bicycle or a tonga and take this letter to the commandant of the Pakistan military unit. Also tell him yourself that you have come from Mano Majra and the situation is serious. He must send his trucks and soldiers to evacuate the Muslims as early as possible. At once.’

‘Yes, sir,’ answered the constable clicking his heels.

‘Sentry Sahib,’ implored Meet Singh.

‘Sentry Sahib, Sentry Sahib, Sentry Sahib,’ repeated the head constable angrily. ‘You have been eating my ears with your “Sentry Sahibs”. What do you want?’

‘Iqbal Singh is a Sikh.’

‘Did you open the fly-buttons of his pants to see whether he was a Sikh or a Mussulman? You are a simple bhai of a temple. Go and pray.’

The head constable took his place in front of the policemen standing in double file.

‘Attention! By the left, quick march.’

Meet Singh turned aback to the temple without answering the eager queries of the villagers.

The head constable’s visit had divided Mano Majra into two halves as neatly as a knife cuts through a pat of butter.

Muslims sat and moped in their houses. Rumours of atrocities committed by Sikhs on Muslims in Patiala, Ambala and Kapurthala, which they had heard and dismissed, came back to their minds. They had heard of gentlewomen having their veils taken off, being stripped and marched down crowded streets to be raped in the market place. Many had eluded their would-be ravishers by killing themselves. They had heard of mosques being desecrated by the slaughter of pigs on the premises, and of copies of the holy Quran being torn up by infidels. Quite suddenly, every Sikh in Mano Majra became a stranger with an evil intent. His long hair and beard appeared barbarous, his kirpan menacingly anti-Muslim. For the first time, the name Pakistan came to mean something to them—a refuge where there were no Sikhs.