After Mishra got rid of his handcuffs, he quickly seized the camera and video recording of the arrest. The TV reporters who were standing just outside were told that there had been ‘an unfortunate misunderstanding’. Mishra was very polite about it, but he made sure everyone got to know the details.

The next day had been a disaster for the entire administration of Balangir district. Every newspaper and TV channel carried a report about how the Superintendent of Police had arrested a very senior ministry official from Delhi and accused him of being, of all things, a top Maoist. It was a huge embarrassment for the police. Collector Behera, who tried to tell anyone who would listen that he was not involved in the matter at all, was also criticised. What was he doing, everyone asked, when all this happened?

Mishra, meanwhile, went back to Deogan. He had planned to stay for two or three days. He stayed a week. He visited every Gond village in the area, and talked to the headmen. He listened to the stories of the villagers. Not just the stories of their lives, but also the tales of their people, and their legends. His junior officers looked at all the documents. Mishra walked up into Devi Hills. He visited the hanal kot and saw the many pens along the forest trails. He walked up to the sources of the two streams that flowed down to the Tel. He walked around to the river. And he even visited Korok’s garden and had tea with Anchita’s father.

As it turned out, Mishra was interested in gardening himself, and had many things to discuss with Korok. The ministry official was very impressed with the garden, and promised he would visit again and stay for a longer time. He couldn’t take back a medicinal plant as gift, because he was here on official work, but when he came on holiday, he promised Korok, he would.

Then Mishra went back to Delhi and, by the end of January, wrote a very long report for the Supreme Court. And he wrote everything in it. How the Gonds lived, what their hopes and aspirations were, what they wanted for themselves. But mainly he wrote about the government in Balangir. He wrote about how Gonds were repeatedly arrested, and very rarely convicted of any crime. He submitted numbers and data showing how many Gonds had police cases against them. He wrote about how the police treated the villagers. He even wrote about how, according to him, it was very possible that the Collector of Balangir had falsely written that the Gond villages did not have a drought problem, just to cause them hardship. And he wrote, at the end, how the police had falsely accused him of being a Maoist himself, and arrested him and dragged him in handcuffs back to town.