The storm was far from over.
The fall of the kidnappers had only lifted a corner of the veil. Behind the exposed front stood giants the puppeteers who never touched the strings directly. Betal's neural analysis of encrypted communications and deep-traced fund transfers revealed a horrifying truth: the kidnapping of Nagamani, Bharadwaj, and Vijayalakshmi wasn't just local vengeance it was corporate warfare, sanctioned by power, profit, and politics.
And at the center of it all were names that once seemed untouchable.
Village President – Ramudu
Constituency MLA – Jaggareddy
Central Minister – Banerjee
Foreign Allies – Senior Executives & Investors of Apple and Microsoft
The Digital Autopsy Begins
Under the blue glow of CosDefense's command bay, Dilli stood in his Predator Suit, motionless. The armor's neural mesh synced with Betal's mainframe, fusing their consciousnesses into one seamless stream of perception.
The HUD flickered alive — a constellation of names, bank trails, IP traces, and satellite pins scattered across the map of India and beyond.
Betal (calm, resonant): "The threads run deeper than we imagined, Dilli. Your village's tragedy wasn't coincidence — it was a calculated warning."
Dilli (coldly): "Then we follow every thread… until there's nothing left to hide behind."
1. The Village President — Ramudu
The first trail began in Atreyapuram itself.
Betal reconstructed the local communication grid — radio pings, tower logs, municipal network traffic. Among the chatter, one signature stood out: a series of encrypted voice calls routed through a private relay system — originating from Ramudu's residence at 2:37 a.m., the night of the kidnapping.
Cross-referencing tower handshakes and energy fluctuations, Betal mapped the calls' destinations: a political office in East Godavari, another to a satellite phone registered under a fake name, and the third — to a private line inside Jaggareddy's constituency headquarters.
Ramudu's motive became clear through the financial data:
Six days before the kidnapping, ₹4.2 crores were credited into an account belonging to his nephew's construction company — funds originating from a PAC linked to an international investment arm with stakes in Apple's South Asia expansion project.
Dilli (through clenched teeth): "He sold his people for a payment transfer."
Betal: "Not sold, Dilli. Traded loyalty — for silence."
2. MLA Jaggareddy — The Political Enforcer
Betal's AI infiltrated Jaggareddy's digital ecosystem — WhatsApp backups, deleted drive logs, traffic from his legislative office routers. A single 42-second voice note recovered from a corrupted phone painted the picture:
"CosPulse must not stand. If they launch indigenous hardware, foreign funding goes up in smoke. Tell Banerjee I handled the village end. Ramudu will manage the dirt."
The message had been auto-deleted, but Betal reconstructed it from the electromagnetic residue inside the device's NAND memory — a digital resurrection of guilt.
Further analysis revealed Jaggareddy's offshore assets: shell companies in Dubai and Mauritius, masked under tech consultancy fronts. These entities received funding through intermediaries owned by foreign investors — specifically, executives from Apple and Microsoft, seeking to suppress CosPulse's 100% Made-in-India device project that threatened their market monopoly.
Betal: "He's a politician with a foreign spine, Dilli. Every rupee he earns bleeds the country."
Dilli: "Then we break his spine — digitally first."
Betal remotely froze all six of Jaggareddy's offshore accounts and mirrored his mail servers to CosDefense's secure node. Evidence of illegal lobbying, data leaks, and trade manipulation began to unfold like confessions on code.
3. Central Minister Banerjee — The Gatekeeper
Every conspiracy needs a guardian in Delhi — a man in power to make paperwork vanish and crimes evaporate into protocol. That man was Minister Arindam Banerjee, a charismatic central minister responsible for "Digital Commerce and Foreign Trade."
Betal uncovered that Banerjee had personally blocked CosPulse's export license in 2005 — citing "national security verification" while approving identical clearance for Apple's Indian partner within 48 hours.
Dilli and Betal's biggest clue came from an encrypted diplomatic channel — one used for foreign trade approvals. Buried within hundreds of encoded transmissions was a curious data packet signed "B-Delta". When decrypted, it revealed a transaction trail — $72 million wired from an offshore corporate trust to Banerjee's foundation, just weeks before he publicly praised "global tech collaboration."
Betal's quantum-decode engine visualized the data as a digital spiderweb — Banerjee at the center, the threads stretching to California's Silicon Valley and Redmond, Washington.
Dilli: "Foreign hands…
It's not just politics anymore, Betal. It's empire protection."
4. The Foreign Shadows — Apple & Microsoft Executives
Using satellite relays and corporate darknets, Betal traced the origins of the payments to two offshore corporate trusts:
The Pacific Innovation Council (Apple-backed)
The Global Digital Alliance (Microsoft-backed)
Each of them had funneled funds through shell NGOs registered in Singapore, masked as "Rural Education Support Funds." But beneath the surface, the money financed political bribes, local manipulations, and sabotage operations designed to suppress domestic competitors like CosPulse.
Betal hacked into an internal server hosted in Cupertino, where an executive email chain discussed "neutralizing indigenous disruption."
The subject line read:
"Indian startup showing aggressive R&D — action suggested."
Attached were photographs of Dilli at a 2004 tech exhibition — time-stamped, analyzed, and circulated internally with the note:
"Target developing indigenous chipset — possible violation of IP boundaries. Suggest containment through local political route."
Dilli's blood ran cold.
Dilli (quietly): "They watched me before I even launched."
Betal: "They feared what you would become."
The Global Conspiracy Unraveled
Betal created a Neural Network Constellation Map — a live, breathing model of corruption:
At the core: Minister Banerjee
The middle ring: Jaggareddy and Ramudu, acting as regional enforcers
The outer ring: Corporate funders from Apple and Microsoft, masked behind investors and NGOs
The trigger node: The kidnapping — to emotionally and psychologically cripple Dilli into surrendering CosPulse.
Betal presented it on Dilli's HUD. Lines of light converged on a single phrase written across the digital map:
"Operation Containment — CosPulse Termination."