The police team met with little success. Santu has disappeared from his village and the families of Paramjeet and Amarjeet are in Delhi, trying to secure their bail. In Talli, Paramjeet’s three-storeyed haveli lies locked. Neighbours take it upon them to recount her saga. Similarly, the house of Amarjeet—whose father Jaswant Singh is apparently a “leader” of the Shiromani Akali Dal (Badal) who runs a tent-house business in Jalalpur—too is deserted.

In Salempur Santu’s mother Tarshada is alone, suffering from a bout of high-blood pressure. “We disinherited Santu two years ago and don’t know where he is. It was only when the Delhi Police came to our house that we learnt about his activities,” she said. But neighbours concede quietly that Santu was living in this decrepit house till the Katara case hit the headlines.

The recent hullabaloo and the imminent police crackdown on travel agents have not changed one thing in the villages of Talli, Jalalpur and Salempur. Everyone harbours a wish to go abroad, whatever the cost. They are willing to hock their jewellery, sell their land, do anything to get their hands on the big ticket.

What fuels this flight? Unemployment, rising prices and the drudgery of tilling depleted landholdings, answer the villagers. “Everyone who is left in the village wants to go abroad,” say the crowd outside Amarjeet’s deserted house. “The travel agents come door-to-door telling us the paperwork will be done for a price within a couple of days. We think everything is legal. Now they have all gone underground,” says a farmer, Shingara Singh.

... contd.