Given this history of animosity, Khader could not be entirely faulted for suspecting that Dhamu was the one who smashed his store sign. Of course he had to go to the police. Although the police didn’t take him very seriously when he shared his suspicions with them, Dhamu’s friends believed—though they never expressed it in public—that the police saw this as a good opportunity to get their own revenge on Dhamu, whom they had hated for years. Even if you ignored the fact that Dhamu had insulted and antagonized the police in the days of the freedom struggle, everyone in the bazaar also knew that no police sepoy or head constable could ever get a free piece of fruit or a beedi in Dhamu’s shop.

When the municipality’s formal complaint arrived at the police station, the inspector went in person to meet with the chairman, M. C. Joseph. The chairman shared with him his suspicions about the involvement of the municipal manual scavengers in the theft of the tamarind pods.

And so, the police concocted two cases. They said that the manual scavengers were the ones who threw stones at the tamarind tree, but that Dhamu had made use of that situation to smash Khader’s store sign, hoping the blame would fall on the manual scavengers. They drafted two conveniently related charges. The police were also quite confident that coolie Ayyappan was the man Dhamu had employed to smash Khader’s sign.