The news broke just after dawn, carried by stiff winter winds and the clipped voices of All India Radio announcers.
"Government protection withdrawn from Shri Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, and others. Situation normal. Decision taken after review of national security requirements."
Those were the only words spoken in public.
Clean. Sterile. Procedural.
But Delhi's political circles were not fooled.
Every man who'd held a portfolio, every woman who'd ever hosted a salon for the Congress high command, every editor who knew how to read between the lines—they all knew what it meant.
It meant that the confinement—disguised as "protection"—was over.
And it meant Anirban Sen, the man no one imagined obeyed anyone, had suddenly—and inexplicably—given in.
Or appeared to.
By noon, the whispers had turned into murmurs in Parliament's stone corridors, the cigarette-thick air of The Imperial's bar, the verandahs of Patiala House, the newspaper offices around ITO.
"Sen doesn't bow to the British. But Why he withdraw protection now?"
"It's Mountbatten. He must have pressured Sen."
"Or coerced him. The Viceroy wants Nehru back in the picture."
"Why? To mediate between India and Pakistan?"
"Ha! After Pakistan's crew were arrested inside Indian waters? After their naval vessels crossed the line deliberately?"
"Exactly. Mountbatten wants Nehru to 'intercede,' to calm Sen, to stop the war from tipping fully eastward."
"But Sen doesn't listen. So why now?"
"Because he wants something. And when Sen wants something, he moves pieces. Even men like Nehru."
"I acknowledge it . But even if Viceroy wants Sen to withdraw the Protection, he will not if he believes..."
" That Neheru and his circle will not be a threat to Sen for now and even in future."
"Yes, Congress and People only know him now, and they are irrelevant "
By evening, it wasn't just suspicion—it was consensus.
Everyone believed Mountbatten had written too many letters, too urgently.
Everyone believed Sen had finally yielded.
But nobody could explain why this decision came immediately after the Indian Navy dragged Pakistan's submarine crew out from the surf like smugglers caught in the act.
There was no logic.
No reason.
No pattern that Delhi's weary veterans of politics could understand.
Which made it infinitely more frightening.
---
Nehru's house was filled again with familiar voices—not joyous, not relieved—just lost. Unmoored. Men who once shaped India's destiny now sat on his sofas like refugees of a vanished world.
Maulana Azad leaned heavily on his cane as he entered the sitting room, his movements tired, as though every step reminded him of how far he had fallen. Nearby, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai flipped through newspaper editorials with trembling fingers. Govind Ballabh Pant stood staring at the garden as if expecting British officers to drag them back into detention.
No one celebrated.
The air felt like a lament waiting to be spoken.
Nehru himself stood by the window, arms crossed, staring into the winter light with a face more hollow than when he had been confined. House arrest had not crushed him—it had shown him the truth he had avoided all his life.
"Moral victories," he muttered under his breath. "We counted moral victories while the country counted corpses."
Azad lowered himself onto an armchair with a sigh. "Jawaharlal… don't."
But Nehru didn't stop.
"Mountbatten writes, Sen yields, and here we are—free to walk, free to speak, free to pretend we still matter." His voice cracked at the edges. "But the people know who saved them. The people know who stood between them and collapse."
Azad's eyes softened in sympathy. "You are still the face of India's ideals."
"Are we?" Nehru asked quietly. "Or are we the last fragments of a world already dead?"
Azad couldn't answer. He didn't need to.
The silence answered for him.
---
The door opened sharply.
Indira entered—her shoulders set, her expression carved from the ice of disillusioned youth. She looked at the men in the room as one might look at portraits of ancestors: with respect, pity, and irritation.
"Papa." She put the newspaper on the table with a force that made cups rattle. "You need to read what the political circle is saying."
Nehru didn't turn. "I know what they're saying."
"No, you don't." Her voice hardened. "You couldn't. You were… locked away with old books. The world outside changed faster than you could imagine."
Azad inhaled sharply, but Indira continued.
"Everyone believes Mountbatten forced Sen's hand to withdraw your protection. They think the British want you to 'mediate' between Sen and Pakistan after Pakistan's submarine incident. But they also believe—rightly or wrongly—that Sen released you because he doesn't consider you a threat anymore."
Nehru stiffened.
Indira didn't soften.
"Papa… during your confinement, Sen did what you always said would take decades."
She lifted her hand, ticking items off as if reading an indictment.
"He integrated the princely states without the chaos you predicted. He solved the Kashmir situation when the world was convinced the UN would intervene. He stopped Pakistan's naval provocation cold—without blinking. He rallied Patel's network, Menon's diplomacy, Saraswati Sinha's Hyderabad strategy. Together they unified India the way you always dreamed but could never execute."
Nehru finally turned, wounded. "Indira—"
"No. You need to hear this."
Her voice broke with anger, frustration—and something like grief.
"People don't say your name anymore when they talk of the Congress's future. They say Sen's. They say he's the heir to Patel's steel. To Bose's fire. To Sardar Baldev Singh's discipline. They say he leads India into a future where idealism doesn't mean surrender."
Azad sank back, face pale.
Nehru tried, "Indira, I did what I thought was right—"
"But India needed more than thought!" she snapped. "While you debated morality, others fought. While you wrote essays in confinement, Sen reshaped the nation. And if something happens to him tomorrow, people will mourn him like a fallen emperor."
Her eyes glistened—not with tears, but with the realization that her own future was slipping away.
"Papa," she whispered, "you didn't just lose political ground. You lost the Congress itself."
Nehru swallowed, throat tight.
"And me?" She asked softly.
Indira looked away.
"Sen is a rock in the path. A mountain blocking everything. For me, for you, for everyone who believed leadership meant speeches and ideals. He made us obsolete in our own party."
A long silence.
Then she picked up her shawl and walked out in frustration, leaving behind the fading echo of dreams she once inherited but no longer believed in.
---
Azad waited until her steps faded.
Then he exhaled deeply.
"Jawaharlal… she is harsh. But she is not wrong."
Nehru's head bowed.
"Harsh?" he whispered. "Harsh is what the world became when my philosophy failed. When my principles cracked under artillery fire in Kashmir."
The memories of that failure broke over him like waves.
"I believed moral authority could protect India from the dark. But the dark swallowed us anyway."
Azad's voice trembled. "We fear becoming irrelevant, Jawaharlal, because we are. Look outside—this Delhi, this India—this is not the land we shaped. It is the land Sen forged in fire."
Nehru sank onto the sofa, staring at his hands as if they no longer belonged to him.
"Do you think," he asked quietly, "that history will say we were wrong?"
Azad didn't immediately answer.
He looked older than he had ever looked, his beard grey and unkempt from confinement, his eyes dimmed by guilt.
"History," Azad finally said, "will say that when India needed steel, we offered silk. When India needed warriors, we sent philosophers. And we believed—foolishly—that philosophy could stop bullets."
Nehru closed his eyes.
He didn't cry. He didn't speak.
He simply sat there as the last of his illusions died, one by one.
---
Night fell over Delhi like a shroud.
At the Red Fort, in the humid depths beneath sandstone and memory, a different drama unfolded.
"Major General Akbar Khan" hung in his chains like a grotesque effigy of a proud officer, his uniform torn away, his voice little more than a rasp. Colonel Sharma stood in the dim light, arms folded, watching the man sway.
He did not speak with cruelty.
He did not need to.
Cruelty had already finished its work.
Khan's remaining eye burned with hate, the kind that survived starvation, pain, and despair. His body shook with fever, but his mind had survived long enough to surrender secrets—troop movements, codes, networks, caches.
India had extracted everything it needed.
The clank of boots echoed.
Colonel Sharma straightened as Anirban Sen Stood outside—calm, expression unreadable.
Sharma exit and saluted sharply.
"Prime Minister."
Anirban did not enter. The stench of sweat and rot was overwhelming.
Sharma cleared his throat.
"He's done, sir. He gave us routes, handlers, safe houses—everything west of the Indus. Pakistan's intelligence web in India is… finished." His voice lowered. "Sir, he has served his purpose."
Anirban didn't immediately answer.
He simply watched the broken man swaying from the chains, the symbol of a nation that had tried to break India with cold precision and found itself crushed instead.
When he finally spoke, his tone was soft.
Too soft.
"Not yet."
Sharma's eyes flickered—but he said nothing.
He only nodded slowly as Anirban turned away and walked toward the exit, his silhouette swallowed by the darkness of the corridor.
Behind him, Khan shivered, unaware that his final journey had already begun.
Anirban's footsteps echoed through the sandstone tunnels long after he left the interrogation chamber. The air in the Red Fort felt colder here—colder than stone, colder than the night outside. Colonel Sharma followed a few steps behind, boots striking the ground in disciplined rhythm.
When they reached the upper level—the old Mughal corridor now converted into DESI's covert administrative wing—Sharma finally spoke.
"Sir," he said cautiously, "you mean to… use him?"
Anirban paused. The lantern light brushed against his profile, sharpening the jawline hardened by months of war, sleepless nights, and decisions that etched themselves into the nation's bones.
"Khan still has one last service to offer India," Anirban replied. His voice was steady, chilling in its certainty. "A service more valuable than any intelligence he provided."
Sharma nodded once. He didn't need an explanation. He had served long enough to understand the shape of a plan merely from the shadow it cast. Then Deputy Chief of DESI join them.
"Sir,Captain Ravi Shankar has been briefed," he said simply. "He will make the first approach."
Yes, everything will be Pre-Planned for this Scenario.
The plan was elegant in its cruelty—a masterpiece of psychological manipulation crafted with surgical precision.
Khan would "overhear" whispered conversations between guards, each line rehearsed to perfection, each word calibrated to seep into his mind like slow venom. They spoke of his impending execution, of a slow poison chosen specifically to prolong agony. Theatrical despair—carefully designed, carefully timed. His own desperation would finish the rest.
And then would come the angel of mercy.
A young officer. Earnest eyes. Controlled disgust dripping from his voice whenever he mentioned Anirban Sen's "tyranny."
Captain Ravi Shankar—DESI's finest operative—an artist of deception, capable of projecting honesty with unnerving ease. His task was simple in design, lethal in effect: offer escape.
Civilian clothes.
A weapon "for protection."
Information about Nehru's location and routine—just enough truth to be convincing, just enough fabrication to steer him like a guided projectile.
The narrative fed to Khan would be irresistible.
Nehru—the great peace-lover, the supposed moral compass of Congress—would be painted as a secret opponent of the war, a potential savior, a desperate man who might offer asylum. If not that, there was always Khan's hatred for Indian leadership, a hatred that needed only the faintest spark to turn into a final act of vengeance.
Sharma had hesitated at first after hearing the Plan—poisoning was imprecise. But Anirban had spoken casually, almost offhand, "discussing the weather," as he put it.
"The poison we'll actually use is fast-acting but delayed," Anirban said, his tone as calm as if planning a dinner menu.
"A ricin derivative. Modified by our IISc chemist. Twelve to twenty-four hours of complete lucidity, then rapid organ failure. Enough time for him to act. Not enough time to trace anything back to us."
It had been nothing more than an "accidental suggestion," made by Anirban.yet it had sparked the chemist's imagination, producing something terrifyingly effective.
Now Khan—broken, hollow-eyed, trembling inside his chains—stood before Anirban. Once a proud officer. A man who claimed to protect his country. Now reduced to a weapon in the hands of the very enemies he had sworn to fight.
"What do you think of collateral damage, Colonel?" Anirban asked softly. The question tasted like ash even as cold determination thrummed beneath it.
Sharma didn't flinch.
"Almost certain. Azad visits Nehru regularly. Nehru's daughter may be present. Servants, guards… impossible to know exactly who will be inside the house when Khan enters."
The weight of that truth settled on Anirban—heavy, but not painful. Not guilt, but the cold satisfaction of necessity.
In his original timeline, these men had been hailed as giants—Nehru, Azad—towering figures with thunderous speeches and polished ideals. But they were giants with feet of clay. Under their moral posturing, India had become a perpetually wounded nation, a superpower turned into a sermon, a civilization reduced to compromise and hesitation.
Nehru and his descendants had guided India into a mediocrity from which it had never recovered.
Azad had been conscience without strength—morality without backbone. And morality without power was just another form of surrender,But he created the mess of producing Workers instead of inovaters and Whitewash our history that give precedent to others.
Now, stripped of illusions, they were exactly what they had always been: obstacles. Relics. Impediments to the new India he intended to forge with blood and iron—an India unafraid to wield both.
"The narrative must be perfect," Anirban said at last. His voice carried the implacable certainty of a man reshaping destiny with his bare hands.
"A Pakistani agent—driven mad by captivity and hatred—escapes and strikes at prominent peace advocates. Proof, undeniable and final, that our enemies understand only violence. That the ideals these men cherished were luxuries we could no longer afford."
Sharma and DESI Deputy Chief nodded, scribbling notes in his weathered leather journal.
"The irony won't be lost on the public," Sharma murmured.
"The men who insisted Pakistan could be reasoned with—even after its submarine and troops entered Indian waters—killed by a Pakistani agent who knew no reason." D. Chief said.
"Exactly," Anirban replied.
"Their deaths will serve India better than their lives ever did. Martyrs to their own naïveté. Proof that the path of strength was the only path that could have saved us."
He paused.
Then:
"After the incident, ensure security is visibly heightened around all war supporters. Extra guards for me, for you, for Patel, for the cabinet. We must appear shaken—reacting to an unforeseen tragedy, not orchestrating it."
"And the investigation?" Sharma asked.
Anirban's smile was bloodless.
"Khan will be found dead at the scene. The poison will finish its work. A desperate terrorist's final mission, ended by his own hand when cornered. The weapon will be untraceable—a common piece from Delhi's black market. Case closed."
The trap was set.
The narrative written.
The actors chosen.
All that remained now was to watch it unfold over the coming days—slow, inevitable, devastating.
A tragedy designed to save a nation.
A murder scripted as patriotism.
History, rewritten with precision.
"Good."
Anirban did not stop walking.
"But,Sir," The Deputy Chief continued, "there is… the matter of collateral presence. Nehru's friends visit him often. His daughter is unpredictable. Servants, security—"
Anirban stopped at the threshold of the courtyard. The moonlight painted half his face silver.
"This war is not clean, Chief."
His voice was a whisper made of steel.
"And history will not remember the cost. Only the result."
He stepped into the night air, the faint breeze stirring the ends of his coat.
"Khan's path is set. Make sure he gets the… medicine."
Sharma and Chief Of DESI saluted.
"Yes, Prime Minister."
Behind them, in the depths of the fortress once used by emperors, a broken general shivered against iron chains—unaware that his release had already been orchestrated, and his death already written.
---
The manipulation began in the hour between dusk and midnight—the hour when hope thins and dread takes its place.
Captain Ravi Shankar approached Khan's cell quietly, like an officer sneaking into a forbidden conversation. He carried no lantern; he moved by the dim light of a single torch fixed to the corridor wall.
Inside the cell, Khan hung limp, drool sliding down his chin, his breath ragged.
"General," Ravi whispered, glancing nervously over his shoulder as if terrified of being caught. "Wake up."
Khan stirred. Slowly. Painfully.
Ravi leaned close to the bars.
"They will kill you tomorrow."
Khan's remaining eye fixed on him, bloodshot, fever-bright.
Ravi continued, voice trembling with a mix of fear and rehearsed sincerity.
"A new poison. A slow one. They want you to rot inside your own body. They want your death to… last."
Khan let out a sound—half choke, half laugh.
"Better… than this."
"Maybe," Ravi allowed, "but not if you can still do something that matters."
Khan's eye narrowed.
The hook had caught.
Ravi pressed on.
"I can get you out. A uniform. Civilian clothes. A weapon. It won't save you—you're already dying." He lowered his voice. "They poisoned you during interrogation. A modified compound. You have… maybe a day."
Khan felt a shiver travel through his spine—a shiver not of fear, but clarity.
He had known death was coming.
But the idea of using that death?
That made him lean forward.
"What do you… want?" he rasped.
Ravi looked down, as though ashamed of what he was about to say.
"To expose Sen's crimes," he whispered. "To reach someone who still believes in peace. Someone who opposed all this madness."
Khan blinked slowly.
"Nehru."
Ravi nodded.
"Yes. He's vulnerable now. Accessible. They removed his security. No guards outside. If you speak to him—if you show him what was done to you—he will take you in. He will tell the world."
Khan's breathing grew harsher.
Or he may kill Nehru.
A part of him whispered that.
A darker part.
A part that remembered humiliation, pain, and the laughter of Indian guards.
Ravi saw the flicker in his eye.
Good.
Ambiguity was the weapon.
Rage was the fuse.
"Listen," Ravi continued urgently, "you have hours. You need to leave now. I'll open the door. After that… God be with you."
Khan's lips curled into something thin and cracked.
"God already abandoned me."
"Then take fate into your own hands," Ravi whispered.
He slipped Khan the small vial—labeled "antidote"—which was nothing of the sort. The real toxin was already coursing through Khan's blood. The vial only prolonged lucidity, buying him enough time to act… and die exactly where Anirban needed him to.
Ravi unlocked the cell.
Chains rattled.
Khan collapsed forward, barely catching himself on trembling arms. Ravi quickly passed him civilian clothes, old and worn. A coat. A scarf. A simple pistol—untraceable.
"No more time," Ravi whispered. "Go."
And Khan went.
Stumbling. Limbs shaking. Heart pounding against ribs like a trapped animal.
He didn't notice the shadows that peeled away from the corners of the corridor.
DESI operatives. Silent. Precise.
They followed him as he emerged into the night.
---
Khan reached the streets of Delhi with the uneasy gait of a man half-alive, half-dead, driven not by strength but by venomous purpose. His fever sharpened lights into halos. Every shadow looked like an enemy. Every sound like a threat.
DESI agents followed at a distance—trained shadows.
One took position on a rooftop.
Another blended into a group of late-night fruit vendors.
A third moved along the parallel alleyways, tracking him with a gaze sharp as a hawk.
None intervened.
Their job was simple:
Observe.
Ensure he reached the target.
Interfere only if absolutely necessary.
Khan clutched the pistol beneath his coat. His breaths were shorter now.
The modified toxin in his blood squeezed his chest like a closing fist, but the fake antidote pill dissolved on his tongue like hope—bitter, warm, deceitful.
He reached the bungalow-lined street where Nehru lived.
There were no guards.
No patrols.
No intelligence officers.
Of course not.
Anirban had made sure of that.
But the house wasn't dark.
Soft lights glowed behind curtains.
Voices murmured inside.
Khan crouched behind the garden wall, watching shadows shift behind the glass. Two silhouettes crossed the room. Then four. Then six.
A meeting.
Of moderates.
Damage control.
Last chance to salvage a crumbling vision.
Inside that house were men whose names had once shaped India's future.
Nehru.
Azad.
Pant.
Kidwai.
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan.
Others (moderator from both sides including Muslim League and Congress)who'd refused to flee despite the storm gathering around them.
If he walked in now—
He could kill them.
All of them.
Strike one last blow for Pakistan… or for vengeance… or for the version of reality poisoned into him by grief and torture.
His fingers tightened on the pistol.
His breath shook.
On the opposite side of the street, DESI operatives watched with hawk-like stillness—but one of them frowned.
He counted the silhouettes inside.
That's… too many.
He leaned forward.
Was that—?
Before he could complete the thought, the door to Nehru's house opened with a creak.
A servant walked out carrying a tray of empty cups, humming softly under his breath. He spotted no one unusual and went back inside.
But for the one DESI operative on the rooftop, the glimpse had been enough.
His breath caught.
That silhouette at the center of the room—
The frail frame, the staff beside the chair, the bald head shining under lamplight—
It couldn't be.
But it was.
Gandhi.
The one man whose presence changed the meaning of everything.
The operatives stiffened.
They had checked the entire block.
They had swept the surroundings.
Not one Intel channel had indicated Gandhi would be here.
His presence turned a controlled operation into a volatile storm.
Before the rooftop operative could relay the discovery, Khan moved.
He staggered up the path, each step heavier than the last. The toxin hammered inside his skull. His pulse became a war drum.
He clutched the pistol.
He pushed open the gate.
Inside the house, the conversation among moderates grew louder, voices trembling with old fears and fading hopes.
And in that exact moment—
as the door creaked open
and Nehru turned toward the sound
and Azad's eyes widened
and Gandhi rose from his chair, leaning heavily on his staff
and the DESI operatives watching from afar froze in stunned horror—
Major General Akbar Khan entered Nehru's home.
The serpent had arrived at the heart of India's fading dream.
And nothing—
not the poison in his veins,
not the watchers in the shadows,
not the ghosts of history—
could stop what was about to unfold.