Amid all this, Khader was dealt another blow—the cases filed against Dhamu regarding the store sign were dismissed in court. There were no reliable witnesses who would testify that Dhamu had hired someone to break Khader’s store sign. Nor could the police find any witnesses to corroborate their claim that the manual scavengers had thrown stones at the tamarind tree. The scavengers said it was lawyer Janardhanan’s brilliance that destroyed the police’s case against them. Since the police could not establish that the scavengers had indeed thrown stones at the tree, their other case also fell apart, in which they had argued that Dhamu had taken advantage of that situation to break Khader’s store sign because he hoped the blame would fall on the scavengers.

Khader grew dejected at how every single one of his trump cards had slipped away from him. It was around then that the Travancore Nesan engineered the crusade to cut down the tree. When Khader read Isakki’s article on the tree, he remembered everything Isakki had said to him the day he’d come to see him. Khader still didn’t set much store by the secret weapons that Isakki said he possessed against Dhamu. But he felt that Isakki’s growing reputation as a political mastermind could mean he did have something up his sleeve. Also, if Khader’s fears were to be proven wrong in the end and Dhamu did lose, that would be a most welcome turn of events indeed. So Khader realized it would be a mistake not to cooperate at this point. His final prayer was that, even if the election ended up costing him his social standing and his financial status, Dhamu should also suffer comparable loss.

Khader became one of the main pillars of the campaign to cut down the tamarind tree. A leaflet was published in his name. He began to address the issue in his election rallies.

Until then, Dhamu had been completely immersed in his election campaign and had paid no attention to the tamarind-tree issue, so he felt uneasy about Khader’s new interest in the subject. He suspected that Khader was merely making a show of concern because he was keen on remaining in Isakki’s and Chairman M. C. Joseph’s good books. But then, one evening, Dhamu learned the truth about the crusade against the tree.