Madam Prime Minister by Seema Goswami

Author:Seema Goswami [Goswami, Seema]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789354923944
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2021-11-27T00:00:00+00:00

12

Asha was in a rare upbeat mood as she drove out of Race Course Road. She had just been briefed by the NSA, Arunoday Sengupta, on the investigation into the Kautilya Mall terror attack. And much to her relief, there had finally been another breakthrough.

As is usually the case, this had come about entirely unexpectedly. Last week, the Army had—on the basis of an anonymous tip-off—raided a house in the Pulwama district in the Valley. By the time the army men arrived, though, the militants were long gone. But a search of the premises had provided a plethora of information. Among the many papers that were seized were detailed schematic maps of Kautilya Mall, surveillance photos of the exteriors and interiors of the structure, and many close-ups of Radhika Pratap Singh, the Prime Minister’s sister-in-law and primary target of the hostage-takers.

Clearly, the men who had carried out the attack had planned it in that very house. Forensic experts had been called in and the house was dusted for fingerprints and examined thoroughly for DNA evidence. The results of these tests had then been put through the combined database of the security agencies—and for once they had struck lucky.

The fingerprints and DNA results were traced back to four militants with suspected links to Jihad-e-Azaadi (JEA), the group that had claimed responsibility for the attack. The houses of these men had then been raided by the investigative agencies, and more evidence had been uncovered in these raids. On the basis of that, the security agencies had been able to identify and arrest another twelve people who had been involved in the planning of the Kautilya Mall attack. They were now being interrogated in one of the black sites that the army had set up all across Kashmir.

Sengupta was hopeful that in a few days—after what he euphemistically referred to as ‘sustained interrogation’ and Asha understood to mean ‘torture’—these men would crack and reveal all the information that they had about the JEA and its workings. Then, it was only a matter of time before the masterminds behind the operation were identified and put behind bars.

At last, there would be a resolution to the Kautilya attack. The nation would have some closure. And the Prime Minister would redeem her reputation.

So, it was with the unfamiliar feeling of optimism that Asha headed out to her first meeting in the Prime Minister’s office in South Block, even though she knew that it would bring her no pleasure. This was her first face-to-face meeting with her Poriborton Party ally, since Sukanya Sarkar had made her case for getting special category status for Bengal. Asha had hemmed and hawed on that occasion and asked for some time to consider the issue.

Well, her time was now up. A month had passed and Sukanya was now ready to push her case once more—and, Asha was sure, more vigorously than ever.

But Asha wasn’t entirely unprepared for this onslaught either. Remembering how helpless she had felt at the last meeting when

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