"When I entered the warehouse, a Constable named Rohan Mahesh, the same young man who accompanied SHO Agarwal to your estate was already kneeling by the safe. The ledger was sitting right out in the open," Gokhale reported, his voice tight. "I made a few inquiries with the station's desk officers. This Rohan's English is exceptionally good, which means..."
"Which means he can easily understand the contents," Rajit Nayar interrupted, his voice dropping to a dangerous octave. "Are you certain he read it?"
"I apologize, Minister, but I cannot be certain. I did not witness him reading it firsthand," Gokhale admitted, his expression grim. "Sir, should I simply..."
Gokhale paused and slowly drew a finger across his throat. "He is just a grassroots constable from the slums so erasing him would require no effort at all."
Nayar stared into the distance, his jaw tight, before finally shaking his head. "No. Recently, the opposition party has been watching me like hawks. I don't know where they are getting their intelligence, but they are desperately looking for any excuse to drag me down from this cabinet seat. I need to keep a very low profile right now. We can shelve this matter for a few months. Once the political heat dies down, it won't be too late to deal with one street cop."
"Sir, what if the boy leaks the contents before then?" Gokhale asked, visibly anxious.
"If he speaks out, who would believe him? He has no physical evidence," Nayar smiled faintly, though it didn't reach his eyes. "Of course, a rumor alone would still cause me a significant headache. Therefore, the boy cannot be allowed to live, regardless of whether he actually saw the ledger's contents or not."
"Understood, Sir. I will let him breathe for a few more months," Gokhale nodded.
Rohan, completely unaware that a State Minister had just put his execution on a temporary delay, returned to his cramped Dharavi shack with twenty-one thousand rupees in his pockets.
When he dumped the massive stacks of cash onto the small wooden table, his parents were stunned into absolute silence. His brother, Amit, stood paralyzed, his mouth hanging wide open.
Normally, Rohan occasionally brought home petty cash, a few dozen rupees here and there from extorting street vendors or skimming traffic fines. But looking at the two thick bundles of thousand-rupee notes and a few loose hundreds, the family couldn't process it.
"Don't panic. This is clean money, It's a direct reward from the SHO," Rohan said with an easy smile. "I broke a massive case tonight and the cash isn't even the best part. The SHO officially announced that the Head Constable promotion is mine."
"Really, beta?" Rohan's mother gasped, her eyes welling with tears.
To her, the money was incredible, but the promotion was life-changing. She had bragged to the neighborhood aunties about it, but she knew how brutally rigged the system was. She never actually expected him to get the stripes.
"Big brother, what kind of case did you solve?" Amit asked, his eyes practically glued to the cash.
"Don't ask about police business," Old Mahesh barked at Amit, slapping the boy's shoulder. He then turned to Rohan, his weathered face dead serious. "Keep this money for yourself, Rohan. I know you want to take the State Civil Service Exam. People say you need to buy expensive study materials and enroll in those elite coaching classes just to have a chance. That money is your ticket out."
"Listen to your father," his mother agreed immediately. "You will definitely pass."
In the end, Rohan left a thousand rupees on the table for the family's monthly groceries and locked the remaining twenty thousand away.
His father was entirely right. Whether it was the state-level MPSC or the federal UPSC exams, attempting them without professional coaching was virtually impossible. The exams had no set syllabus as they tested everything from quantum physics to ancient geography to international macroeconomics.
A massive, predatory coaching industry had sprung up around these exams and the fees were astronomical, often costing several years of a working-class family's entire income. Desperate families would pool their life savings, take out loans, and sell their ancestral land just to send one child to a coaching institute.
Because the admission rate was less than a fraction of a percent, the vast majority of candidates failed. The psychological and financial devastation was immense, leading to a notoriously high suicide rate among aspirants every single year.
The civil service exams were essentially a grand illusion... a beautiful, intoxicating dream sold to the bottom rung of Indian society to keep them hoping. Only a miraculous handful ever actually climbed out.
But Rohan wasn't an ordinary candidate.
Three days later, the official paperwork came down from the Commissioner's office. Rohan was officially a Head Constable, elevating him above the sixty-plus grunts at Spanda Police Station.
But the promotion was only the third-best thing to happen to him that week.
Over the past few days, Rohan had discovered two massive physical changes resulting from his consciousness transferring into this younger body.
First, his physical strength had skyrocketed. He had felt it when he kicked the Kala Sher boss across the warehouse, but he had since tested it in private. His muscle density, reflexes, and raw power were more capable than a normal person. Combined with the combat training he had Rohan felt confident he could tear through many people without breaking a sweat. In the violent, unpredictable world of Mumbai law enforcement, this physical edge was a massive insurance policy.
Second, his cognitive processing had changed as he now possessed a flawless eidetic memory.
He could read ten lines of text in a single glance and retain it perfectly. When he closed his eyes, the pages of Nayar's black ledger played back in his mind with terrifying clarity. He could remember every date, every name, and every financial figure. He had tested his new brain on a fifty-page legal textbook, skimming it from cover to cover in less than a minute. He could recite it backward.
Whatever neurological anomaly had occurred during his rebirth, he wasn't going to question it because it was the ultimate cheat code.
Despite his new advantages, Rohan remained deeply paranoid. He knew Rajit Nayar's character, the Finance Minister was a ruthless political animal. He hadn't sent hitmen yet, but the axe was definitely coming.
Running away or going into hiding would only confirm his guilt and make him a target forever.
Sitting in his shack, Rohan formulated a strategy. He needed to make himself untouchable. If he remained a nameless, faceless slum cop, Nayar could make him disappear without a ripple but if Rohan transformed himself into a high-profile, highly publicized person...a public hero, murdering him would draw national media attention. Nayar's political rivals would smell blood in the water and use the assassination to tear the Minister apart.
Rohan needed to become famous, and he needed to do it fast.
Furthermore, with his newly awakened photographic memory, the impossible MPSC State Exams were no longer a gamble anymore it was a guaranteed victory.
Authors Note:-
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