"There is one more matter," Jinnah said as the coffee arrived, the cups set down with quiet precision.
Commissioner Harrington looked up over the rim of his saucer. "Yes?"
"The Army company is still camped near the station," Jinnah said. "They are idle. They complain about the heat, the mosquitoes, the boredom. And in the deep jungle there are still three strongholds."
Harrington's expression tightened. "I know. The ones the Zaildars used to hire."
"Yes," Jinnah agreed. "And those men are not just criminals—they are a lingering symbol. As long as they remain in the jungle, the district remains infected."
Harrington exhaled through his nose. "The Army hates jungle sweeps. They're heavy infantry. They're loud. By the time they reach the target, the target has already evaporated."
"My Farabis do not evaporate the target," Jinnah said, flatly. "They do not make noise. They know the paths. They know where men hide when they believe the state is blind."
He leaned forward, voice controlled but decisive—like counsel offering a solution that made refusal look foolish.
"I propose a joint operation, Commissioner."
Harrington did not speak immediately.
"My men act as beaters," Jinnah continued. "They locate the camps, identify sentries, flush the targets, and lead the way. The Army follows behind as the hammer—cordon, capture, and secure surrender. We finish this while we still have boots on the ground and momentum in the district."
A joint civilian–military operation was irregular. So was most of what had worked in Sandalbar.
Harrington's eyes sharpened. "You want the Army to do the sealing—and your men to do the hunting."
"Correct."
Another pause, then the Commissioner set his cup down as if it were a stamp on a document.
"Do it," he said. "I'll speak to the Major. But your men lead. If this succeeds, it succeeds because you brought a scalpel to a job the Army keeps trying to solve with a cannon."
Two days later, before sunrise, the operation moved.
It was a sight the district had never witnessed: thirty Farabis in crisp khaki, rifles slung with deliberate discipline, moving in formation beside a company of British Indian Army regulars—boots, bayonets, and the heavy confidence of men trained to hold ground.
Ahead of them, unseen, the Root had already worked the night.
Madho's scouts had moved through the scrub like smoke—breaking twigs in subtle patterns, scraping shallow marks into bark, leaving signs only hunters would notice. The Army marched on a path that appeared "lucky." In truth, it was guided.
The first stronghold sat deep in the scrub: a cluster of mud huts half-hidden behind thorn and brush, with a ring of thorn fencing that would have stopped polite policemen and frightened villagers.
The bandits inside were used to a predictable rhythm: the distant arrival of lazy constables, a few warning shots fired into the air from a safe distance, loud threats shouted for appearances—and then, eventually, negotiation.
They were not used to Sandalbar's men.
The Farabis moved fast. They fanned out before the dogs even barked. By the time the first bandit stumbled out with a muzzle-loader, the perimeter was already sealed.
He ran—straight into a wall of Army bayonets.
"Drop it!" the Army captain roared.
The man froze, eyes darting. He could threaten farmers. He could not bargain with rifles that didn't shake.
In minutes it ended.
Hands rose. Weapons hit the dirt. Courage that fed on helpless victims collapsed the moment real force appeared.
The second stronghold fought harder.
It sat on a slight ridge—just enough elevation to give the bandits arrogance. They fired wildly from behind trees and broken mud walls. The shots lacked training but not desperation.
Four Farabis took hits—painful, but not fatal. An Army private took a pellet in the leg and went down swearing, dragged back by his mates.
The response was immediate and disciplined.
The Farabis laid suppressing fire not like peasants with rifles, but like men trained to keep their heads and count their shots. The Army moved as the anvil—flanking, closing the circle, cutting off the escape line.
The bandits broke. They ran.
But they ran into younger estate guards sprinting like hounds, driving them down, pinning them, binding wrists with rope and cloth.
By noon, the third stronghold fell as well—less a battle than the collapse of an illusion. Once the first two camps fell, the third understood the game had changed. They surrendered quickly, eyes hollow, trying to exchange their fear for mercy.
The Recovery
The true victory was not the captured guns or the bound men.
It was what lay behind the huts.
Sacks of grain—stacked high, stolen from villages during the chaos. Livestock penned in makeshift enclosures: buffaloes and goats bleating and stamping in the heat, living proof of months of robbery.
And then, in the darkest huts, the cost that could not be counted in ledgers.
Women. Children.
Some missing for weeks. Some for months.
They had been taken from the lowest castes and the weakest households—used as forced labor, made to cook and clean for gangs that lived off terror, kept in squalor so complete it felt like the jungle itself had swallowed them.
When the Farabis led them out into the sunlight, shielding their eyes, a silence descended—heavy enough to kill conversation.
Bashir, one of the Farabis, tore the cloth from his own turban and wrapped it around a woman's shoulders. She wasn't screaming. She wasn't fighting. She was just shaking—like a body that had forgotten what safety felt like.
"You are safe, sister," Bashir said, voice thick and controlled. "Jinnah-saheb has sent us. You are going home."
The Walk
By sunset the convoy reached the main road again.
Jinnah waited at the boundary of Chak 17-M, standing beside the estate truck as though the road itself belonged to him now. Dr. Evelyn was there with ambulance carts—ready to receive the women and children, ready to make the suffering real and medical rather than whispered and hidden.
The Army Major moved to load the prisoners into trucks.
"No," Jinnah said.
The Major stopped mid-step. "Sir?"
Jinnah pointed at the forty-odd bound bandits—dusty, bleeding in places, ropes cutting into wrists.
"These men lived by terror," he said. "They made the villagers believe they were monsters—untouchable. If you drive them away in trucks, the fear remains. The people will only think they are 'gone away.'"
He turned and pointed down the long dirt road that cut through the ten villages like a spine.
"Walk them," Jinnah ordered.
The Major frowned. "Walk them?"
"March them," Jinnah corrected, voice sharp with certainty. "Through every village they burned. Past every house they threatened. Let the people see them. Let them understand they are not demons. They are dirty men in ropes."
Inside his skull, Bilal's voice came like a quiet blade.
PsyOps victory lap. Break the myth.
And so the procession formed.
Farabis on the flanks—heads high, rifles shouldered, disciplined enough to look like a state. The Army in the rear—heavy, inevitable. And in the middle the bandits shuffled through dust, stripped of weapons and stripped of mystique.
Villagers emerged as the column passed.
No cheering. No stones.
Just a profound, collective exhale—the sound of a district letting go of a decade of fear.
They saw the men who had burned looms walking in chains. They saw the women and children in ambulance carts, tended by the lady doctor. They saw the Farabis—sons and brothers—standing like a new kind of wall.
In Bhagatpur, an old woman spat on the ground as the bandit leader passed.
"Not so tall today," she muttered.
By the time the column reached the police station, the spell had fractured. The Zaildars were in jail. The bandits were in chains. The Darogha was in the hospital.
And above the Canal Bungalow, the estate flag snapped in the wind—signaling not just ownership, but the arrival of something more unsettling:
A new order.
Efficient.
Visible.
And impossible to ignore.