Rohan understood the English text perfectly. It was a black ledger detailing every illicit financial transaction between Finance Minister Rajit Nayar and the city's worst criminal syndicates. The pages meticulously documented dates, specific locations, bagmen, and staggering amounts of extorted cash.
He knew instantly that if Nayar discovered he had read these pages, his life was forfeit. He was merely a bottom-tier constable and to a State Minister, crushing him would require no more effort than stepping on a cockroach, thinking about this cold sweat broke out across his back drenching his khaki shirt.
Rohan immediately dropped the ledger back into the dirt.
Just as the book left his fingers, SHO Yash Agarwal's booming voice echoed from the warehouse entrance. A junior constable was giving the all-clear, confirming the area was secure and Rohan spotted Agarwal stepping through the doorframe alongside the Minister's secretary, Harish Gokhale.
Rohan's heart was pounding, he needed a distraction. Without hesitating, he snatched a thick bundle of thousand-rupee notes from the scattered pile and shoved it roughly into his shirt.
Agarwal's gaze naturally locked onto the open safe the second he entered the room. He caught Rohan's blatant theft in plain sight and the SHO was stunned. The sheer audacity of a rookie stealing the Minister's money right in front of them was absolutely unbelievable.
"Rohan! What the hell are you doing?" Agarwal roared, his face flushing with anger.
"Inspector Agarwal, let the boy be," Gokhale interrupted smoothly.
The secretary had also witnessed the blatant theft, however, Gokhale cared nothing for the scattered cash or the gold bullion. He knew exactly how corrupt these grassroots cops were. Skimming off the top was the unwritten rule of the Mumbai police force, it would have been far more suspicious if they had not tried to steal anything at all.
Gokhale stepped briskly toward the open vault and his eyes scanned the dirt before locking onto the discarded leather notebook.
He snatched it up with lightning speed and the secretary's demeanor shifted instantly. His eyes turned dead and utterly cold as he glared down at the young constable.
"Did you read this?"
"Sir? I... I just saw all this money," Rohan stammered, perfectly feigning sheer panic. His hands visibly trembled as he yanked the stolen cash out of his shirt. "I shouldn't have been greedy. Please, I was wrong!"
Gokhale studied Rohan's terrified, shaking form for several agonizing seconds. The boy was clearly paralyzed by the thought of being arrested for petty theft, completely oblivious to the real danger. The secretary's tension evaporated as he slipped the ledger safely into the inner pocket of his suit jacket.
"Keep it," Gokhale said, his tone returning to a polite, bureaucratic hum. "Consider it a bonus."
Gokhale then stooped down, scooped up two more massive bricks of cash, and handed them directly to Agarwal. "Inspector, for the precinct's hard work tonight. Distribute it as you see fit."
"Sir, I couldn't possibly," Agarwal sputtered, visibly shocked by the direct bribe from the Minister's inner circle.
Gokhale stepped close, leaning in to whisper directly into Agarwal's ear. "Take the money, Inspector. These Kala Sher street rats have seen the contents of this vault. They do not need to draw breath by tomorrow morning. I trust you can handle the cleanup?"
Agarwal swallowed hard and nodded as the implication was crystal clear. The Minister needed absolute silence, and dead men told no tales, the gang members had dug their own graves the moment they touched that safe.
"Understood," Agarwal said quietly. "I will have a team transport the safe to your residence."
"Unnecessary," Gokhale replied, shaking his head. "My vehicle is waiting outside the perimeter. Load it directly into my trunk."
Agarwal turned to his men. "Rohan! Bharat! Seal the safe and carry it to the secretary's car."
Rohan let out a long, shuddering breath as he moved to obey. He had survived the encounter as his calculated theft had provided the perfect cover for his true crime.
Rohan and Old Bharat quickly stuffed the scattered wealth back inside the steel box and slammed the heavy door shut. It took both of them straining their backs to carry the massive weight through the slum alleys and out to the main road.
They hoisted it into the trunk of Gokhale's waiting SUV and the secretary exchanged a final, silent nod with Agarwal before driving away into the night.
Back inside the warehouse, Rohan approached the SHO and handed over the thick bundle of cash he had used as his prop. It was a massive stack of one hundred thousand-rupee notes.
A hundred thousand rupees. Grassroots cops in Mumbai technically earned around a thousand rupees a month, but after the upper brass skimmed their cut and administrative delays, most constables took home far less.
They survived by eating free meals off street vendors and extorting pocket change during patrols. A hundred thousand rupees was nearly ten years of honest wages and it physically pained Rohan to hand it over, but he knew keeping it would make Agarwal suspicious as he had to play the part of the obedient, slightly cowardly grunt.
Agarwal eagerly snatched the bundle, adding it to the two stacks Gokhale had given him and he was practically vibrating with greed. He now held three hundred thousand rupees in untraceable cash and more importantly, he had successfully indebted the State Finance Minister to him.
Agarwal looked at Rohan with genuine affection, the kid was an absolute goldmine.
"Excellent work tonight, boys," Agarwal announced to the room, his eyes gleaming. "Two thousand rupees for every man here. Rohan and Bharat, you led the charge. Three thousand for each of you. The desk jockeys back at the station get a thousand. But remember this very clearly. Tonight never happened, not a word of this leaves Dharavi."
Agarwal then turned his attention to the zip-tied gang members bleeding on the floor. He ordered a specialized squad to load the Kala Sher enforcers into the back of an unmarked police van and they were being taken for an encounter.
In Mumbai, police encounters were a sanitized term for extrajudicial executions as it was the absolute cleanest way to ensure silence as no one would demand justice for dead slum thugs.
Agarwal knew Deputy Inspector Gurmeet Singh was getting kickbacks from this gang, but he no longer cared. With the Finance Minister in his corner, his Deputy Inspector was nothing but a nuisance waiting to be crushed.
Authors Note:-
That's chapter 6
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