‘Baitha hai, sir, baitha hai!’(‘‘‘He is sitting there, Sir, he is there!’’’)( The Netting of Punjab CM’s assassin) continues....

I know you can manage on your own. Just go ahead and do it’’’, he said brushing my protestations aside.

While I found his confidence in me rather flattering, prudence and discretion clearly demanded a far more comprehensive and professional response. I had expected that the Special Director would involve the Branch investigating the case and discuss the operation with the Director. But, his confidence in me seemed so supreme that he wanted me to go ahead on my own. That left me at a complete loss on how to proceed further.

It was already 7 PM or so when I returned home. I rang up Satish Jha, my Superintendent of Police based in Mumbai, and asked him to rush to Delhi by air with his support staff to report to me the following morning. He could immediately guess that an important operation was in the offing and didn’t make any queries on the phone. He had collaborated with me on several similar missions in the past. However, I thought to myself, the presence of three or four trusted men under Satish was not going to suffice. Clearly, I needed more trusted hands with courage, grit and, most importantly, unfailing loyalty to me to go on this dangerous mission. Where was I to find such people and how? Here was a situation where I had ‘pucca’ information on an armed terrorist wanted in a sensational act of terror and I was expected to get him with my own limited resources without involving any other agency. How would I do it? Would I be able to live up to the expectations of my boss? Was it not a most foolhardy mission to begin with? Why couldn’t I assertively tell my boss that I couldn’t do it alone?

Sleep that night played truant. My mind was racked by fears of all kinds, not knowing what lay in store for us the next day; success or failure, life or death.

To be continued.....