The DM turned to me and then back to them. “I promise you,” he said in that quiet way of his, “that this time justice will be done. I was not here during the last riots. This time I am here. Please give me the names.”
And they did finally give the frigging names — of some of the most powerful and prestigious men of the bloody district. The DM turned to me and said very calmly, “Let us round them all up before the body of this boy is lowered into the dust.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied. No “Lucky” this time, not even “Lakshman”; this was an order from the DM. I left the thana immediately in my jeep, roaring out of there like a blast from a buffalo’s behind. I broke my own fucking speed limit several times that evening. I knew the DM would also have to leave on his incessant patrols. It was after midnight when I returned to the graveyard. They’d finished digging the boy’s grave. I followed the beam of my torch across the cold moonless dark of the cemetery to the burial spot. The DM was back. The body had not yet been lowered into the dust.
I marched up to the DM, who was standing with the bereaved family. “Sir,” I said, “they have all been arrested.”
You should have seen the expressions on the frigging faces of those Muslim mourners. They didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.
It was around three o’clock in the morning when the DM and I returned to our camp cots in the police station. We wearily stretched out, fully dressed, to catch a little sleep. Two hours later, as dawn was breaking, we were awakened by an uproar at the thana gates. “What the hell is going on?” I demanded of the constable on duty. “It sounds like a pair of hippos making babies on a tin sheet.” Lucky was still rubbing the sleep from his eyes when we found that it was indeed a hippo in human shape. The local MLA from the ruling party, member of the state legislative assembly, a generously endowed and utterly charmless specimen of the tribe called Maheshwari Devi, had arrived. She was with a group of her supporters, all banging pots and pans and shouting motherloving slogans. And frigging hell, they were all holding curfew passes.
“Injustice, injustice!” she was crying out, dutifully echoed by her eunuch supporters. “We will not put up with this injustice. We will not allow the arrest of innocent people.”
It didn’t take long for Lucky to wake up and figure out what the hell had happened. I’d never seen him so furious. “Tell me,” he asked her, “are you the representative of just one community, and not of this whole town? The last few days, when hundreds of Muslims were arrested, beaten, dragged by their beards, and placed behind bars, often on mere suspicion, even though many had no criminal records, no complaint against them, I never heard even a whimper of protest from you. But last night, because ten men have been arrested, after complaints in which they were directly named as guilty of murder, you march here within two hours and shout of injustice? How dare you!”
The hippo was so pissing startled by this outburst you could have heard her veins pop. No mere government official had ever dared to address her this way. She was as much at a loss how to respond as a blind nympho to a wink. “Get out,” the DM said, though if you asked him, he’d fucking say he “directed her to leave the premises of the police station immediately and refused to discuss the issue any further.” I escorted her out.
Don’t give up on me just yet, Randy. Come on, have another drink. You see, that was not the end of the story. The MLA’s demonstration was only the beginning — political foreplay. The whole day witnessed more pressure on the DM than he had experienced, he tells me, in a single day on any issue during his career. The chief minister of the state telephoned to inquire why there was so much outrage. The DM replied that it was a matter of basic justice, and he would not change his decision. He was relieved that the CM did not get back to him again. But from the state capital downwards, the pressure continued to mount like a bad case of wind. Then, just as perceptibly, it eased in the afternoon. Once again, we thought we’d weathered the bloody storm.
Late that night — in keeping with our daily pattern since the tension in the town had arisen — we sat together at police headquarters. We were reviewing the arrests and releases of the day — our scorecard, we used to call it. Lucky noted that some of the numbers didn’t add up. He summoned the station house officer and asked him to explain.
The bugger was more tight-lipped than a Hindi film actress who’s been asked to kiss the villain. But finally the station house officer revealed that the ten men arrested the previous night had been released. By the frigging courts. Late the same bloody morning.
Lucky looked like a cow that had been hit on the head with a trishul. “Released?” he asked incredulously. “But how could they release them?”
Further questioning revealed that the police — my own men, goddamn them — had framed the weakest possible charges against the sisterlovers. Not of murder, arson, and rioting, but of the most minor bloody offense possible: violation of curfew. So the courts had let the detainees off with a fine of fifty rupees each. Just under three dollars at current exchange rates, Randy. No wonder we hadn’t been bothered by the screaming politicians all afternoon.
I told you that earlier that morning I’d never seen the DM so furious. This time he exceeded himself. You’ve seen Lucky; he’s a soft-spoken, thoughtful, calm, and restrained individual. Now everyone was stunned to see him explode with all the unpredictable velocity of a soothli bomb. He shouted at the men in the station house. “You’re crooks, not police!” he ranted. “You’re deceitful, communal-minded bigots, not fit to wear your uniforms!” He was working himself into quite a state. “Go and find the murderers you’ve released. Go now! I’ll personally chase you right up to the gates of hell if the ten released men are not rounded up again within the hour.”
“Lucky,” I murmured, “I couldn’t have done better myself.” I took the best of my police officers and rushed back into town. You should have seen the expressions on the faces of some of the ten accused men when they were rearrested. Like society matrons finding a horny hand up their saris. This time Lucky and I personally supervised the filing of the charges — the preparation of documents for the courts.
The charges may or may not stick when they come to trial. But you should know that the Sessions Court released the accused Hindus on bail within a frigging week. The Muslims who had been rounded up in the bomb case are still being refused bail. The DM went to see the fucking district judge and said, “I have never tried to interfere with the judicial process. But here — the same riot, the same offenses, the same sections of the Penal Code — how can there be two such openly different standards for people of two communities? It is not an ordinary case,” he added. “It is a question of the faith of a whole community in the system of justice in our country.”
But the motherloving district judge refused to even discuss the issue with the DM. We do our job, Randy. I just wish everyone would do theirs as well.
Let me tell you something about these bloody riots — ours, and the others across northern India. They’re like a raging flood. When the stormy waters recede, all you will see left behind are corpses and ruins. Corpses, Randy, and fucking ruins.
Priscilla Hart. I knew you wanted to talk about Priscilla. I’m just trying to get you to understand why we don’t know much about what happened to her. We had enough on our minds at the time. But I’ll tell you what I know, Randy. Let’s have another drink first.
from transcript of Randy Diggs interview