“That migrant worker who was kicked out of the bus was the one who died that night, squashed to death by the very same Chinese bus driver.” Elvis confirmed her fears.

“Why did the police never show us this clip?”

“Because they never had it. The migrant worker who shot this didn’t trust the police and chose to hand it to the Indian Embassy instead,” Elvis explained. “I received a request for a closed-door meeting yesterday. That was when the Indian Ambassador showed me this.”

“But the timing is terrible!”

“It was a calculated move,” Yu Chin interjected. “I am certain that they received the clip right after the riot. But they chose to hide it till now. They wanted to be seen stepping in to negotiate and getting a lighter sentence for the rioters. It’s going to win them lots of political brownie points back home in India.”

“What can we do now?” Sharon turned to Elvis and asked.

“I had a closed-door meeting with the police commissioner this morning. He is going to apply for a deferment of sentencing by claiming that new evidence has emerged.”

“But this clip of a local Chinese bus driver kicking an Indian migrant worker out of the bus is going to ruffle a lot of feathers.” Sharon frowned. “We are going to look very bad.”

“Which is why I am hoping not to submit this clip as court evidence,” Elvis said.

Sharon glared at Elvis, bewildered.

“Did you notice that there was an Indian woman involved in the scuffle? She is a local. And it so happened that the police tracked her down yesterday.”

“She is the one who made a police report about someone taking an upskirt photo of her and subsequently impersonated a police officer to conduct a security search on the bus,” Yu Chin added.

Sharon nodded. She recalled having heard about that earlier.

“She will become our new evidence,” Elvis stated. “Her claim of having an upskirt photo taken may serve as a mitigating factor, but her act of mischief in impersonating a police officer and creating fear and alarm on a bus full of migrant workers shall be the focus of the new inquiry. For all we know, she was the trigger of the Little India riot.”

Sharon bit her lip as thoughts raced through her mind. If the court were to be persuaded to reduce the sentence, pinning the blame on this act of mischief was definitely preferable to the clip of the bus driver exercising physical violence inundated with elements of racism and xenophobia. The Indian Embassy would be satisfied with the outcome of the sentencing and her political party could escape the backlash from the social activists. It was the lesser of the two evils.

“Alright, let’s do this.”