I TRANSLATE all this to Manju’s parents. They speak passable English and no Hindi and are most comfortable in Tamizh. I have been their interpreter all day. I had taken them to the Mahauli police station first to meet the constables. The constables who’d spotted a vehicle in the dead of the night, given chase and nabbed Monu’s henchmen red-handed. Without them, the case would never have come to light. In fact, the adulteration mafia had planned to dump Manju’s body and weave a story around it—portraying Manju as an unstable, wayward drunkard who got into a brawl and died.

I failed as interpreter, though. It was beyond me to translate into Hindi those outpourings of gratitude. Manju’s parents’ expressions, their tears said it all—the debt we owed the constables. The head constable said, ‘‘We were on patrol but we went to have tea and saw the car. They immediately offered us a bribe of Rs 2 lakh—to let them go and dump the body at a spot nobody would locate. But their crime was so heinous I wouldn’t let them off for Rs 2 crore!’’

This overpaid IIM graduate doesn’t think of a lakh or two as a big amount. But even this MBA begins respecting the value of Rs 2,000 when the head constable says, ‘‘Sir, can you help my son find a job? He’s just completing his B.Sc, even a job for Rs 2,000 a month will help a lot. You will help an honest boy.’’ As we leave, he says, ‘‘Chaliye, aapko Guruji ka darshan karata hun,’’ and takes out a photo of Asaram Bapu.

... contd.