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  Megha’s name was missing in the final list because she had been rejected!

  ‘How the fuck is this possible? It’s a fucking conspiracy, Megha! We must do something about it. They just can’t reject you like this. I mean what was the basis of the rejection?’ Chris yelled.

  Rallying behind him, ABCP supporters started screaming in protest, demanding the results be re-checked. Jai wondered if he was the reason behind the shocking rejection since he had gone against the party ethics when he beat up the biker. But then he had apologized to the ABCP for his action, so that couldn’t be it.

  In contrast, the AISC and SCI supporters were rejoicing. Both their candidates—Krishna and Akhilesh—had made it to the list. But Raghu found it strange that Krishna was missing from the scene. Could Krishna have been involved in manipulating the final list? Raghu dismissed his thought as quickly as it came to him. No one, in the history of the elections, had been able to manipulate the list.

  Meanwhile, Jai and his teammates regained their composure and went to the selection committee room where its members were just returning from the boardroom.

  ‘How could you just reject Megha’s form? She did nothing wrong,’ one of the head representatives of ABCP asked the panellists furiously.

  ‘We have no personal grudges against anyone. The list says all we have to say on this matter.’

  They did not argue too much and instead handed over Megha’s application form to her. She opened it in fear and saw that every criterion had been met except one. That made her even more furious.

  Lack of attendance in Mrs Nair’s classes. The candidates need to meet the 75 per cent attendance criterion for each subject, in the absence of which the form will be rejected.

  But how could it be? Megha asked herself. She clearly remembered that one day when she had to skip her class halfway through because of her headache. But she had thought Mrs Nair would mark her present for a class upon her request.

  ‘It’s just one class. Does it matter so much?’ Jai asked the committee, raising his voice in frustration.

  ‘Yes, it does. Mrs Nair has taken all of three lectures this year and if she is absent for one, her attendance for that class goes down to 66.6 per cent. I think that clears up everything. Now can you please leave?’ one of the committee members replied curtly.

  Megha, Jai and the head representative were left speechless by the decision, and left the room in anger.

  ‘I had a severe migraine that day and after taking permission from Mrs Nair, I excused myself from the class. She even announced in front of the whole class that I shouldn’t worry about the attendance and leave. I assumed she would remember to mark me present. Ruhi was there with me that day—she will remember,’ Megha recounted as they made their way out.

  Jai put his arm around Megha in consolation and asked her not to worry about it too much. He was about to say something else when he noticed Krishna passing through the corridor with a smug expression on his face. And he wasn’t alone; Mrs Nair was with him!

  That’s strange! What is Krishna doing with Mrs Nair when he should be out with his teammates by the bulletin board? I must get to the bottom of this, Jai thought to himself

  Megha’s sobs broke his train of thoughts. ‘I’m sorry. I should have attended the lecture,’ she cried. She then walked over to her fellow party members and apologized for not having lived up to their expectations. They didn’t know how to react; it was a big setback for the party. In another part of the college campus, Raghu went to Krishna to give him the good news but stopped dead in his tracks when he saw him leading Mrs Nair into a room. The cloud of confusion was finally lifting off Raghu’s eyes. He remembered his first session of AISC when Mrs Nair had addressed the students. Krishna had tried to outwit them all!

  But what could he do? He had no proof. And at that point, no one would have listened to him anyway. Or so Raghu thought, and kept mum.

  Dejected and heartbroken, Megha retreated to her room and asked everyone to keep away. She wanted to be left alone for some time. The rejection was not going to affect her in the long term, but the way things had played out depressed her completely. She realized that she had been made the scapegoat of a larger conspiracy. She failed her party, she failed herself, and what about Raghu? Now they would never be able to set their plan in motion to bring their friend back.

  With a heavy heart, she logged on to Facebook and wrote,

  It’s all fabrication—the list, the names of candidates, the selection procedure, everything. Yes, I am hurt. Why shouldn’t I be? Even I have emotions. But that does not mean I have given up. That does not mean the people who are behind this conspiracy have won. My motive to join politics was not to gain anything material from it. It was to gain back a lost friend. And we won’t give up until we have succeeded in doing just that. We will come back stronger and fight harder than ever for our cause. Satyameva Jayate.

  Sixteen

  22 June 2016

  ‘Congratulations, comrades. We’ve taken our first step towards victory . . .’ Krishna addressed the AISC party members.

  Then he went around to Raghu and said, ‘Today I’m assigning you your biggest task yet. On the face of it, the task might look easy, but it isn’t. The NGO people to whom you’re supposed to deliver the parcels today come under the high-risk bracket. That’s the reason I don’t want any other student except you to handle it. This is a big task, the biggest till date for you.’

  ‘Why is it high-risk?’ asked Raghu.

  ‘Because it’s a decider. It’ll decide the fate of thousands of poor Dalits and people from other lower castes; it’ll decide the results of the student elections which are not far. It’ll decide our fate. This time you have to bring back another bag along with you and hand over a note with the parcel. Upon arrival, you have to deliver the bag to a firm in Delhi.’

  Raghu listened carefully as Krishna continued, ‘The higher authority will keep an eye on you for your safety.’

  My safety? Raghu wondered. Something didn’t feel right about the whole thing. But he didn’t want to outwardly refuse to do the job because that would mean arriving at a dead end. If he had to get to the bottom of what was happening, he had to play along. After discussing with Krishna further, he agreed.

  With the traumatizing memories of Ambala still lingering in his mind, Raghu began his journey to the heartland of Haryana in the wee hours of the night. After a couple of hours, he reached the Good Luck restaurant, where the meeting was scheduled to take place. But the restaurant was completely deserted, with not a person in sight. Raghu waited for more than an hour, looking around, hoping someone would turn up, but no one came.

  In the meantime, Ruhi kept calling him on his phone but he ignored the calls, focused solely on the job at hand. Eventually, he decided to cut open the parcels to check if it was safe to leave them there. All this while, his phone kept ringing. Before he could cut open the parcel, he decided to pick up the call.

  ‘I need to tell you something like right now,’ Ruhi shouted from the other side; she sounded worried.

  ‘Not now, Ruhi. I will call you tonight, I am a little busy.’

  ‘I know! But I need to tell you—’

  Before she could finish her sentence, Raghu disconnected the call.

  Keeping his phone back into his jeans pocket, he cut open one of the boxes. The contents in the box brought his life to a screeching halt. It was stuffed with bundles of cash! He tore open another box and another—they all confirmed his worst fears! He realized that Krishna’s movement, Kraanti, was not about helping the poor but about feeding the powerful. All their big talk and big ideas were nothing but hogwash. As he gathered the scattered bundles and dumped them back into the bags, he tore open the envelope and read the message inside:

  Hope the material this time is of better quality and not like last time when we targeted the DLF Mall area near MGU for the riots. Your money is safe in the boxes.

  Raghu couldn’t believe what he was reading. Krish
na was behind the DLF Mall attacks? The incident which caused a rift with his friends and put Ruhi’s life in danger? And he was supporting the very person who was responsible for it? Raghu felt choked. He had barely regained composure when a car entered the restaurant compound. It must be one of his guys coming to collect the money, Raghu thought. As if the latest disclosure did not jolt him enough, another shock awaited him. Raghu had to pinch himself to believe what he saw in front of his eyes.

  It was Chris who stepped out of the car, which was filled with the same boxes as Raghu’s.

  As Chris came and stood in front of Raghu, all he managed was a hoarse ‘Why?’

  Chris had no answer to Raghu’s question.

  ‘You guys held me guilty for changing parties, but you are no different from me. All this while you’ve been working for Krishna as well? Why did you backstab Jai and Megha? They trusted you, and what did you do in return? Made fools of their trust? Why, Chris? Answer me!’

  Chris kept his head down like a schoolboy caught stealing in a candy store by his father.

  ‘Have you lost your mind? Give me a fucking answer! When did you get involved in such nefarious activities?’ Raghu kept prodding but Chris wouldn’t say a word.

  ‘Do you even know what’s in the boxes? Since the first day of my joining, I’ve been delivering these parcels without knowing about their contents. Do you know the very same people who ask me to transport these boxes are also the ones behind the DLF Mall riots?’ He handed over the note to Chris.

  ‘So the mystery is getting solved,’ Chris finally said, but without giving any justification about his presence, or his level of involvement with Krishna and his organization.

  ‘But give me more information. Where exactly are you coming from?’

  ‘From another location where I delivered some boxes and collected a few bags as per instructions. I got to know about the money racket during my last task, and today, when I took up another task, I checked the bags on an impulse and found weapons inside.’

  ‘Oh fuck. These people are monsters and want nothing but power. Red salute is not about all this. Krishna is a monster.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a power game in which we have become embroiled. These kinds of people manipulate us on false grounds and use us for their benefit. But let’s not say or do anything in haste. Or you never know what will happen—’

  As if out of nowhere, another car appeared on the scene. A few burly-looking men got down and instructed the two to keep the bags in their car’s boot. Raghu handed over the boxes from his car to them, after which they left. The two friends decided that Raghu should complete his task of delivering the bags to the firm in Delhi before they revealed anything to anyone. They had to be very careful, lest anyone from Krishna’s camp got a whiff of their intentions. Raghu knew that he had broken Ruhi’s trust completely, but Chris’s involvement shocked him even more. Heavy-hearted, he returned.

  The same day, a few minutes earlier

  Ruhi was passing through the lecture hall after finishing her classes when she reached the ground floor and saw Krishna going into one of the classrooms along with someone she couldn’t quite place but knew was a part of Krishna’s movement. She followed the two and saw that the door had been shut. Nevertheless, she pressed her ear against the door and listened intently. ‘You have assigned such a huge task to two relatively new members of the organization. You think they are reliable?’ the senior representative asked Krishna apprehensively.

  ‘Yes, both are very naive and will do whatever I tell them to without asking too many questions. Moreover both have been victims of discrimination.’ It was Krishna’s voice—calm and confident.

  After a pause, he added, ‘Don’t worry. Raghu will deliver the boxes of money as well as the weapons without knowing what he is actually carrying.’

  ‘What next?’

  Ruhi’s jaw dropped. She retreated to a corner and frantically dialled Raghu’s number. But he kept disconnecting her calls. In her repeated attempts to call him, she missed a part of the conversation inside the classroom.

  ‘We don’t need them after the next task. So you know what has to be done, right?’

  ‘You mean make them go “missing”, just like we did with Mani?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But will that be a wise option, considering all the chaos created after Mani went missing? What if the trail leads back to us?’

  Krishna was the mastermind behind the missing-student case! So crafty was the execution that even the Delhi Police got no leads, and the case went cold. Hiding behind the veil of ideologies of the AISC, Kraanti was all about manipulating students on the grounds of religion, using them for personal gains and then getting rid of them with the support of political big guns.

  Ruhi could feel her head spinning as she desperately tried to call Raghu from the college corridor. Fuck man, please pick up. This is serious. Raghu, you are risking your life, she thought to herself.

  After numerous attempts, she gave up and went running back to hear the rest of the conversation. But she had already missed the major parts.

  ‘You don’t need to worry on that account. Just a little more time and Raghu will be the next one,’ said Krishna.

  ‘You mean . . . Are you serious, even after so much of chaos?’

  ‘It’s not me who has decided it. Also, he’s not going to be facing it alone.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘Both of them,’ the voice confirmed.

  There was some mumbling and then it was Krishna’s voice again, ‘You don’t need to worry on that account. The orders are from higher up. Both Raghu and—’

  Suddenly, sounds of footsteps rang through the corridor. Ruhi hurriedly made an exit lest she get caught. After reaching a safe distance, she stopped to catch her breath. She couldn’t hear the second name. But one thing was clear—Raghu’s life was in grave danger. She made one last attempt to call him. This time he picked up her call, only to disconnect immediately after saying that he was busy. Ruhi had to tell someone all she had heard. And the only other person she relied on after Raghu was Megha.

  She called her up and said that she had something important to tell her. Megha asked her to come directly to her room. Ruhi reached there in no time, sweating profusely. Megha made her sit on the bed and gave her a glass of water.

  ‘What happened? Is everything all right?’ she asked anxiously.

  Ruhi narrated all that she had seen and heard, trying to recollect as best as she could.

  ‘This is unbelievable. And they call themselves honourable students!’ Megha was both shocked and disgusted. ‘Raghu should expose them rather than supporting them in their actions. What is wrong with him? Can he not differentiate between good and bad?’

  ‘People like Krishna are not here for studies. They are bloody sleeper cells working to disrupt the environment whenever ordered. They stay in college for years under the pretext of a PhD thesis when their agenda is just to stay on and brainwash students into believing them and their ideology,’ Ruhi said bitterly. ‘Like Raghu, they might have manipulated so many students over the years for their own political gains. It’s a huge racket that needs to be exposed. But I’m not fearless enough to do it. I’d rather stay away from all this, finish my studies and leave the university rather than get involved and spoil my future,’ she admitted.

  ‘Whatever,’ Megha said, equally upset. ‘Raghu was foolish enough to get involved in all this. We had warned him so many times, you know that for a fact. Jai decided to get into all this mess just to save him. We didn’t want to have anything to do with the elections. We were leading ordinary lives as students.’

  Ruhi kept quiet, unsure what to say or do next.

  ‘You know why my form got rejected? Because of Krishna,’ Megha said.

  ‘Really? How do you know?’

  ‘I saw him walking into a classroom with Mrs Nair.’

  ‘Mrs Nair?’

  ‘Yes, remember we walked out of her class? The reason for
my candidacy rejection was cited as low attendance in her class. I’m certain Krishna made her mark me absent for the class on purpose.’

  ‘That bitch! But frankly, I’m not surprised. I always expected something this low from Krishna. Raghu broke my trust,’ Ruhi’s voice quivered. ‘So what happens next?’ she asked, regaining her composure. ‘Do you fight against the committee and ask for a hearing?’

  ‘I don’t know. ABCP representatives are trying to figure it out. Possibly by tomorrow we will get a clearer idea.’

  ‘This is downright dirty. As if Krishna cleared the 75 per cent attendance rule.’

  After spending some time with Megha, Ruhi felt a little better. She decided to keep trying to get in touch with Raghu. Eventually she would succeed. And she couldn’t give up just yet.

  Even after Ruhi left, Megha couldn’t stop thinking about what she had heard. Neither Jai nor she could imagine something of this magnitude had been taking place right under their noses!

  But there was a crucial part missing—the identity of the second person whose name Ruhi did not hear. Megha kept wondering who that could be. She was restless all through the night and couldn’t catch a wink. Her fatigue was evident when she met Jai the next day.

  ‘You look tired,’ he commented as she walked up to him. She narrated the entire story to him. ‘I knew it! I knew Krishna couldn’t be trusted,’ he said, shocked nonetheless.

  ‘But what do we do now? How do we show his lying face to the world? Now we can’t even stand for elections.’

  ‘What baffles me is that they have managed to trap the professors too. There has to be a way out of this mess.’

  ‘What if we are underestimating the professors’ role in all this? What if they are more deeply involved?’

  ‘No. That’s not possible. After all, they are professors in a reputed institution. They wouldn’t dare to do something like this for fear of tainting their holier-than-thou image. No organization or institution would support such acts, but because of people like Krishna the entire organization is blamed. How I wish we could lead normal lives again. How I wish I could snatch Raghu from their vicious clutches,’ Jai lamented.