1
State of Siege
The room was shot with a sense of despair and defeat. And fear. It was evident on the faces of the five men crowded together in the small room, their faces lit by cell phone light, and the sweat pouring down their faces, soaking their collar, shirt sleeves and even the armpits. The sixth man stood by the shuttered window, his back turned to the five men, the expression on his face inscrutable to the others.
It was close to six in the evening and the din outside the room was ever-increasing. The acrid smell of teargas shells fired some time back still hung in the air outside. The monsoon could break any moment over this part of the country, and it was unbelievably hot and sticky. The crowd was excitable and there was no let-up in the communal sloganeering and issuances of open threats of lynching. A fresh cavalcade of men in tempos and motorcycles, brandishing swords and nail-crusted batons, entered the street and joined the maddened crowd. As far as the eye could see, a sea of men had surrounded the district circuit house, laying siege to it, blocking all entry and exit routes in and out of Azamgarh.
The police had tried to break the siege but were badly outnumbered. They had fired a few teargas shells for tokenism but had quickly retreated, as the crowd, making threatening moves, had surrounded the police party.
It was clear to all neutral observers and the posse of newspersons and camera teams camped outside the circuit house that the police were awaiting orders from Delhi about what to do next. The district collector and the police chief were camped not far from the circuit house, but they were frozen in their tracks, their authority firmly leashed by a diktat from Delhi. The unusual suggestion to them had been to let the situation fester and let the siege be prolonged as far as possible.
But why would Delhi wish for such an occurrence? After all, this was not a cosmetic siege. The anger of the crowd baying for the blood of the six men in the room was real. The electricity and the internet service had been cut off to buttonhole the men in the room and to bring unbearable pressure on them. It was an explosive situation, and a small miscalculation could lead to any kind of eventuality; a storming of the room in the circuit house, police firing—and in the worst-case scenario—the lynching of the Prime Ministerial contender. If that were to happen, it would indeed be a first.
Delhi was aware of the risks involved, but it was prepared to press ahead. There was too much at stake. Here was a chance to call the bluff on the Hindutva warrior, decisively finish off his campaign as the Prime Ministerial challenger and remove this growing threat to the Sahay rule.
The man near the window turned to face his team in the dim light. He spoke to them calmly, displaying no frayed nerves, the famed steely look on his bearded face unflinching.
‘The situation does not look very good.’
Kaushik, the media point man of the group, was as usual first on the mark.
‘That would be an understatement, Sir. The threat is real. With this crowd foaming at their mouths, anything could happen. Before they cut off the internet link, I was receiving reports that thousands from their community were marching to the circuit house from all over the state.’
The Prime Ministerial candidate, Kanwar Pratap Singh, smiled.
About The Author:
Juggi Bhasin is one of the first professionally trained television journalists in India. As a senior news correspondent with Doordarshan News he has covered many landmark events including the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 and reporting from Kashmir about their worst period of militancy and insurgency. He was the first Indian TV journalist to interview North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang in 1992. Juggi was part of the core team of Lok Sabha TV and spent some time there as the Lead Anchor.
He made his debut as a writer in 2012 with the critically acclaimed and successful thriller, The Terrorist, which was followed by four more successful books, all published by Penguin Random House.
( Extracted with due permission from author publisher)
