Summary: The real king of Mumbai’s crime ecosystem is cracking. A fake whisper here, a leaked clip there—and encounter specialist Rathore begins turning on his own men. But paranoia is only the beginning. As Maya and Ravi unleash their psychological war, Rathore’s empire rots from within. A botched encounter explodes into national disgrace. His loyalists vanish. Even his mistress turns on him. Trapped between betrayal and exposure, Rathore spirals—bleeding authority, losing fear, and watching the city slip through his hands. This isn’t a takedown. It’s demolition. And Maya’s real shot hasn’t even been fired yet.
Section 1: The Seed of Doubt
The article Maya and Ravi wrote on real estate tycoon Rakesh Khanna’s murder and two suspicious encounter killings was published the same day. A gossip blog hungry for clicks couldn’t have asked for better content.
The blog post hit like a grenade.
Within hours, it went viral. The blog post didn’t name names, but it raised hard questions. Why was Rakesh Khanna really killed? Why were two young men gunned down and labeled mafia killers linked to a Dubai don? Why were those boys—new to the city from Uttar Pradesh—seen near Arjun Malik’s men just before the hit? How could they breach Khanna’s security? Were some cops invested in Khanna’s business? Why did certain officers keep rising fast? It was sharp, suggestive, and brutal. No proof. But anyone paying attention knew exactly who it was pointing at—Rathore.
TV channels picked it up within a day. News panels ran late-night debates. Political pundits, ex-cops, and crime reporters tore it apart. They tried to connect the dots. Everyone had a theory. None had proof. No one dared say Rathore’s name.
Ravi and Maya had written it that way on purpose. They left out key facts. They left enough for the smart ones to guess, but not enough for anyone to prove.
Then came the copies. Similar articles popped up on other sites. Some were based on gossip. Some were planted. But all of them pushed the same idea: something stinks in the Mumbai Police's Crime Branch. And Rathore is at the center of it.
Rivals of Arora Builders, old friends of Khanna, even another builder who lost a deal to Arora—they all added fuel to the fire. Whispers turned louder. Suspicion grew.
Rathore noticed.
He didn’t know who was behind it, but he had suspects. He knew every crime journalist in Mumbai. Most were on his side—grateful for the tips that made their careers. None had reason to go after him. Ravi had faded from view. He wasn’t on Rathore’s radar. Even when someone tried to kill Ravi, Rathore was told it was linked to another story. Maya? She was long forgotten. After he dumped her and ignored her one desperate call for help, she vanished from his mind. He had no clue who started it. And no time to chase ghosts. He was busy placing Vikas Bhardwaj in power as the new boss of Mumbai's underworld and silencing the last of Arjun’s loyalists. But he was shaken.
Inside his own unit, some of his officers started to worry. What if a judge ordered an inquiry? What if an NGO filed a case? The fear was quiet, but it was spreading.
The first blow had landed.
The noise had begun.
Noise was good—but not enough. Maya wanted collapse. Quiet, deep, permanent. No scandal, no gunfire. Just doubt. Seeded slow, growing inside. She began preparing her next strike on Rathore.
For days, she tracked Rathore’s chain of command—names, links, cracks. She wasn’t aiming to crush him. She was setting him up to destroy himself—paranoid, reckless, desperate. He would tighten the noose around his neck with his own hands. Maybe he'd turn on his men. Maybe he'd go after the wrong enemy. Or maybe he would chase shadows and end up exposing his own cracks. Maya didn’t need to fire a shot. She just had to watch him come undone.
Two nights ago, while going through Ravi’s documents and notes, Maya spotted something. Patterns in formatting. The way cops wrote memos. The tone, the words, the flow. That’s when the idea hit—a forged police report. One that didn’t just look real, but felt urgent. Believable enough to rattle Rathore’s team and plant doubt where it hurt the most—inside his own house.
In the back of a dying print shop, Maya sat at a shaky desk, finishing the fake report. The fan above clanked with each turn. Her fingers smudged ink as she tweaked the spacing and titles, making it look official. The room stank of wet paper and sweat.
The forged memo carried an old police seal Maya had taken from a discarded case file. But the real weapon was in who it came from—and what it said.
She crafted it as an internal note from a Deputy Commissioner of Police in a special oversight division. A department known for watching the watchers. Their job was to track misconduct inside the force—officers who crossed lines, misused power, bent rules. They reported only to the Commissioner. Sometimes, even the Home Minister asked for their inputs.
The memo didn’t accuse. It hinted. It raised red flags about Rathore and his team—Patil, Surve, Verma. It mentioned misuse of discretionary funds, fake encounters conducted without sanction, and disturbing use of bar girls for 'unofficial entertainment.' It questioned Rathore’s growing closeness to one mafia faction. It noted how others were being quietly sidelined. And in its final lines, it said:
“Signs of internal concern regarding Rathore’s unilateral decisions. Risk of reputational damage. Matter flagged for quiet review.”
That line would be the poison.
No fire. No smoke. But enough heat to make men sweat.
Maya didn’t need proof. Just fear. Doubt would do the rest.
She had typed everything herself and saved the fake memo on a USB drive—no email, no cloud, no trace. After printing three hard copies, she stepped into the alley. She lit the pen drive with a match and dropped it. Plastic curled, blackened, and melted in seconds. Humid air hissed. No soft copies. No fingerprints. No trail.
She crushed the burnt plastic with her boot and pushed the ash into the drain. The filthy water carried it away. She watched it vanish with grim satisfaction.
Next stop: a dingy café near Dadar station—more of a ganja den than a real café. Smoke hung thick in the air. Half the crowd was high. The rest were getting there. Broken fans, flickering tube lights, and a haze of ganja gave the place its own kind of invisibility.
Bobby sat slouched in a shadowed corner, yellow skin clinging to bone, needle marks lining both arms. His greasy shirt clung to a body wasting away. He was a confirmed heroin addict—one foot in the grave. Once a trusted courier in Arjun’s world, now just a half-alive ghost who still moved anything if the price was right. No names. No questions. Just silent drops that disappeared. Maya looked at him and quietly wondered how long he had left. But she didn’t care—not as long as he completed this job.
Maya pushed the brown envelope across the table. “Three drops. DCP’s assistant, Patil’s fixer, TV24 newsroom. No names. No trail.” Followed by a thick wad of crisp notes.
Bobby nodded, stuffed the envelope into his torn sling bag, and shoved the cash into his sock without a word. Quick, mechanical, like he’d done it a hundred times.
“Standard delivery—no trace after handoff?” Bobby asked, voice low.
“Yes,” Maya said. “Use the side stairwell. No cameras, no questions.”
Bobby nodded slowly. “If they catch me?”
“They won’t. You vanish after the drop.”
He gave her a long look. “You don’t exist.”
“And you never met me,” she replied, firm.
That was the code. The old rules. Say nothing. Leave nothing. Be invisible.
He left.
Maya sat still, hands around a cold glass of tea. Her face rippled in the surface. This felt safer than facing Rathore himself. No direct threat. No blood. Just silence and doubt doing the damage. And in Maya’s world, that was sometimes more brutal than any bullet. Quieter than a gun. But just as brutal.
Still, a knot of doubt stayed with her. Would anyone take the memo seriously? Or write it off as internal politics? Or media creation? Worse—would someone trace it back to her?
She waited.
Two days later, a murmur spread in a south Mumbai tea stall. Ganesh Satam, a retired inspector—now running quiet errands for a mid-level gang—sipped cutting chai and leaned forward. “Someone’s out to get Rathore,” he muttered. “That memo doing the rounds... looks like someone upstairs wants him cut down.”
The men around him nodded, silent but alert. Cops like him didn’t disappear after retirement. They became messengers, fixers, and whisper merchants—moving in the shadows, hearing everything, seen by none.
“Maybe the senior officers are tired of Rathore,” the inspector added. “Man got too loud, too wild. That memo’s not fake gossip—whoever wrote it knows how the system talks. There’ll be an inquiry. If not now, soon. He’ll be hauled before a board, stripped slow. Maybe even hung out to dry for fake encounters. Bar girls, missing funds, mafia ties—they’re all in there. Subtle, but real enough to stick.”
He glanced around the stall, lowered his voice. “Rathore always thought he was untouchable. That’s what makes him vulnerable. He won’t see it coming.”
Another day, a junior constable from Rathore’s team was quietly transferred—no warning, no reason. Just gone. No one knew why. Some said Rathore suspected him of leaking info that led to the memo. Others said the bosses moved him to protect him—from Rathore’s rage. Whatever the reason, it shook the team. There was no word from Rathore—he had flown off on a secret trip to Cyprus to stash hundreds of crores in black money. His cut was huge, but most of it belonged to powerful politicians and top cops. The timing made things worse. His men were left alone, worried, afraid. That’s how fear spreads. That’s how doubt grows. That’s how men start wondering—who’s next?
The whisper had landed.
And now it was spreading. Quiet words in quiet corners. A glance held too long. A nod that meant more than it should. No one said it out loud—but everyone felt it. Something was shifting. And the center wasn’t holding.
Section 2: The Cracks Appear
The police dismissed Maya’s memo as mischief. A fake. Quickly verified and tossed aside. But the media ran with it. News channels reported the police statement, but kept asking—what if it was true? What if the department was hiding something? What if it wasn’t mischief, but a warning? They turned it into a circus of 'what ifs.' Exactly what Maya wanted—confusion, suspicion, headlines, noise. The memo created one thing no denial could stop: doubt. Inside Rathore’s team, trust started to slip. Officers became nervous. Loyalty thinned. Confidence cracked. And Maya watched it all—tracking reactions, adjusting her moves, shaping the chaos to her plan. The real damage had begun.
Ganesh Satam had once been Rathore’s senior in the force. Now retired, he worked odd jobs for the underworld. That night, he walked into a seedy dance bar in Versova—Rathore’s regular haunt. Girls in tiny clothes danced to loud music. Men threw notes and stared. The best table, with the clearest view, always belonged to Rathore.
Rathore sat at his usual table—drink in one hand, cigarette in the other. Around him were his favorite underworld informers, all half-drunk, all eager to please. In front of them, a busty dancer twisted and swayed, her dangerously deep-cut blouse threatening to come undone with each move. Every few steps, she provocatively lifted her skirt, flashing thick thunder thighs coated in shimmer. The men hooted and clapped like animals. Notes flew in the air, showered from wads the bar owner had quietly supplied. This was routine. The music was deafening. The room reeked of perfume, sweat, and spilled liquor. Rathore barely looked up—his eyes stayed fixed on his phone, scrolling through fresh updates from his vast network. He smiled under his mustache, not at the dancer, but at some piece of information he had just received. He was in control, or so he thought. The show in front of him was loud, filthy, and hollow. Just like the power he clung to.
Ganesh Satam approached. Rathore gave a small nod and waved him to the empty seat. With a subtle hand signal—cop language—he told his informers to leave. They obeyed, greeting Ganesh with respect. Once alone, Ganesh reported on a small errand Rathore had assigned. Nothing big.
Rathore raised an eyebrow. Anything else?
That’s when the real talk began. “You’re in trouble, Rathore,” Satam said, leaning in. “That blog post and that fake memo—they’ve stirred up something serious. People aren’t just whispering. They’re watching. Your own men might be involved. Or maybe they’ve already switched sides.”
He paused, eyes locked on Rathore’s. “You think you're untouchable. That’s what makes this dangerous. I’ve seen this before. Cops who ignored the first wave of whispers—they didn’t just lose control. They got ruined. Suspended. Transferred. Forgotten. You wait too long, you won’t recover.”
Rathore stayed quiet.
Satam leaned back. “You need to look inward. You need to move fast. Someone’s setting you up—and whoever it is, they know what they’re doing.”
Rathore said nothing. Just stared.
He called the bar owner, asked for a bundle. The man returned with a fat wad of notes wrapped in newspaper. Standard practice.
Ganesh Satam took it without shame and left.
Rathore sat a moment longer. Then, earlier than usual, he stood and walked out. His men rushed to follow. He waved them off and got into his black Pajero SUV. Alone. Lit a cigarette. Let it burn.
So was he—burning on the inside. Not from alcohol or rage, but from a quiet shift inside—a growing sense that this wasn’t just noise anymore. It was turning into something that needed his attention. What he once brushed off as nuisance now felt like an annoyance too dangerous to ignore.
Satam’s words had hit harder than any threat. If Rathore didn’t act now, he’d lose control for good. He had seen it happen to other powerful cops—brought down not by bullets, but by silence, whispers, and rot from within. If he didn’t move fast, he’d be the next headline.
Rathore drove alone through the dead of night. Empty roads. No traffic. The city asleep, the streets his. His black Pajero cut through the silence like a blade. He didn’t know where he was going. His hands were on the wheel, but his mind was elsewhere—stuck on Satam’s warning. He was driving on instinct, mechanical and detached.
It wasn’t until he stopped at a traffic light that he realized his mistake—he’d been driving in the opposite direction of Archana Devi’s penthouse. She was his latest obsession. Another aspiring Bollywood starlet he had picked up, just like the many before her. Young, eager, willing to please men like Rathore if it helped her climb the ladder. Rathore liked his women exclusive, off-limits to others. He had set her up in a plush penthouse and visited often, spending the night when he wanted to unwind. She was there for pleasure, nothing more.
He laughed to himself. A rare lapse. Even the great Rathore drifted sometimes.
He turned the wheel sharply, heading toward her now. A different kind of relief awaited. The kind only she could give. No questions. No noise. Just raw, physical escape. Tonight, he needed to blow off steam. And fucking Archana was still his best form of therapy.
Section 3: The Rot Within
Rathore was still trying to make sense of what Ganesh Satam had told him. Then came the calls—one after another. Retired senior cops, old politicians, big names in journalism. All people who owed him. All people whose fortunes he’d helped build and still managed from the shadows. Yet every call carried the same message: You’ve got a problem. Your team is cracking from the inside.
Satam had nailed it. This wasn’t noise anymore. It was movement. And movement inside the force was always the most dangerous kind. If Rathore didn’t act fast, it could spin out of control—even for someone like him. He’d seen it happen to others who ignored the signs. Men once feared, now forgotten. Suspended. Disgraced. It started like this—small shifts, whispers, unease. And if not handled early, it turned fatal.
Rathore didn’t panic. But this time, he was listening.
He kept a straight face. Called in a few informants. Asked quiet questions. But all he got were shifting eyes, mumbled replies, and fake laughs. That’s when the unease took hold—for real this time.
Two days later, an unmarked envelope slid under Rathore’s door. No letterhead. No name. Just anonymous notes, clipped and typed, hinting at something ugly beneath the surface. It spoke of discontent inside his unit—whispers that some officers were distancing themselves from him. That key men like Surve, Verma, and Patil were no longer seen as firm allies. That Rathore was acting solo, calling shots without consensus. It didn’t accuse anyone directly—but the message was clear. Loyalty was fading. And if Rathore didn’t act, the erosion would spread from inside. Quietly. Completely.
Rathore gripped his glass tighter. He read the note again—slower this time. The names hit harder: Surve, Verma, Patil. His own men. Loyal, or so he thought. He had picked them. Protected them. Now they were in question. It made no sense. But the doubt was in. And doubt spreads fast.
Paranoia doesn’t wait. Once the seed is in, it spreads—fast, deep, and without mercy.
That evening, Rathore called a closed-door meeting with four of his most trusted officers. Men who had stood with him for years. But as he looked around the table, something felt off. No banter. No comfort. Just stiff backs and forced politeness.
“What are they saying about me?” he asked flatly.
The silence stretched too long.
Finally, one officer muttered, “There’s… talk. Nothing solid. Just murmurs.”
Rathore’s stare didn’t break. “And what are you doing to shut it down?”
No answer.
Rathore slammed the table. “Track it all. Every whisper, every word. Check phones, reports, side chats—I want names. Now.”
By sunrise, Rathore had moved fast. Two juniors got transferred. One was suspended without a clear reason. Secret phone taps were set up on his own men. He even ordered a full background check on Verma—just in case.
But control wasn’t returning.
Rathore grew more paranoid. A constable standing too long outside his cabin made him suspicious. A late status report sparked a shouting fit. Even a cold cup of tea on his desk felt like a message. Nothing felt normal anymore.
His men started pulling back—slow, careful, quiet. Eyes dropped when he walked in. Salutes turned stiff. Conversations died mid-sentence. Loyalty wasn’t gone. It was hiding. Watching. Waiting.
Outside the police world, the effects moved quicker. A local gun dealer refused to supply a gang connected to Rathore. Said the heat was too high. In this world, backing off meant you smelled trouble before it arrived. A gang leader cancelled a joint deal with the cops. In the eastern zone, a small-time crime boss replaced his middleman—saying he couldn’t trust where his loyalties stood. In the underworld, these moves meant something: power was shifting, and no one wanted to be caught on the wrong side.
In a smoky bar deep in Byculla, two gang bosses nursed their drinks, eyes on the news playing silently overhead. One of them let out a low chuckle. “Rathore’s slipping,” he said, tapping ash into a tray. “His grip’s not what it used to be.”
The other leaned in, voice cold. “His empire’s cracking. His own boys don’t trust him. The cops are whispering. Our dealers are backing off. Everyone sees it now.”
A third, older man at the table lit a beedi and muttered, “If he doesn’t fix it fast, he won’t be able to fix it at all. I’ve seen top men lose everything just because they thought it was beneath them to deal with ‘small talk.’ That’s how the rot starts.”
Maya watched from the sidelines as everything shifted. Loyalties bent. Deals froze. Officers pulled back from Rathore, slow and quiet. This wasn’t chaos. This was erosion—with direction. And she had started it.
Exactly as she had planned.
But even Maya couldn’t predict every turn. In this city, power didn’t fall clean—it shattered, split, scattered. She had fired the first shot, yes. But now the game was moving on its own. And she didn’t know who else was playing.
Section 4: The Poison Spreads
Maya sat at the edge of the safehouse table, elbows resting on a pile of handwritten notes. Ravi stood across from her, arms folded, watching her plan unfold.
Maya gave Ravi a sharp look, the kind that said—'you know what’s coming next.' Ravi wasn’t sure, but he could sense the weight of her plan. He looked at her, unsure but alert.
“We’re going to push Rathore deeper into paranoia,” Maya said. “Break him from the inside. Make him doubt his own people. Isolate him. Force him to tear down his own team. He won’t know who to trust. We’ll sound like Patil and Surve—his most loyal men—talking behind his back.”
Ravi raised an eyebrow. “You want me to mimic Rathore’s most loyal guys?”
“Not mimic—shadow. Match their tone, their slang, the way they pause or laugh. We’ll record using our voices first, then I’ll use clips of their actual speech—TV interviews, old press meets, internal audio we can find online. I’ll run it through software to blend it, distort it just enough. It’ll sound real to anyone who hears it—like Patil and Surve had a private conversation that got secretly recorded and leaked.”
Ravi sighed. “And what are they talking about?”
Maya grinned faintly. “Their doubts. Their fear. The kind of fear that turns men into traitors. Cops like Patil and Surve—men who’ve cleaned blood off Rathore’s boots—have flipped sides before when their survival was at stake. We’ll make them sound shaken, unsure, whispering about Rathore’s fall, wondering if they should switch camps while there’s still time. Betrayal won’t be shouted—it’ll drip, quiet and slow. That’s what will scare Rathore the most.”
“It’ll get dismissed like the fake memo we planted about the special branch probing Rathore. What’s the point?” Ravi asked.
“Maybe it will,” Maya said, “but remember the chaos that memo caused before anyone called it fake. The media ran wild with it. People believed what they wanted to believe. They still do. No one cares if it’s true—only if it feels true.”
Ravi frowned. Maya leaned in.
“This audio clip will do ten times the damage. These days, a fake goes viral before the truth ties its shoelaces. No one checks. No one wants to. That’s the world now—loud, fast, and full of outrage. We’ll ride that wave. And Rathore won’t know what hit him.”
They scripted a conversation—tight, natural, loaded with just enough filth to feel real.
Ravi played Surve. Maya voiced Patil. They recorded in short bursts, layering in background sounds—a clinking glass, the dull buzz of a fan, the occasional car horn. It felt raw, messy, real. Then Maya took the raw audio and ran it through free voice editing software. She trimmed the pauses, added static, and blended in samples of actual speeches by Patil and Surve—taken from old news interviews and department briefings. AI (Artificial Intelligence) voice-matching tools did the rest. Within hours, the voices sounded eerily accurate. Not perfect, but convincing enough to pass as a sloppy leak from a low-end phone recording. The final clip was grainy, uneven, and perfect—it would fool anyone not looking too close. And in today’s world, no one ever did.
In the audio, Pawar mutters that Rathore has lost control. Patil agrees, his voice tight with fear, the kind that makes men turn on their own. They speak in hushed tones, not angry—just scared. Scared of being left behind. Scared of being blamed.
They talk about switching camps. Not with loyalty. With survival. Names are dropped—rival officers rising in power. Men who might offer cover if Rathore crashes.
Then Pawar laughs nervously. “He’s going down, you know.”
Patil doesn't laugh back. “And if he does, we’re finished. He won’t shield us. He’ll serve us up to save himself.”
That line hits like a knife.
The conversation trails off in uneasy silence, just the hum of background noise and clinking glasses. Two crooked cops, drowning in their own fear, quietly plotting betrayal. Not for justice. Not for power. Just to save their own skins.That was the poison.
The second strike was riskier. If the audio clip was a jab to the gut, the video was a full-blown ambush—an attack from a completely different angle, designed to hit harder and deeper.
Ravi sat before the camera, face hidden under a black hood. His voice was run through pitch-shifting software, deep and distorted. The lighting was rough—just a flickering bulb and shadows, like it was filmed on a cheap phone in a broken-down flat. They didn't use a fancy setup. Just what was needed to feel real. Maya held the camera steady and filmed the entire clip in one take. It didn’t have to be polished. It had to feel like truth hiding in plain sight. And it did.
Ravi laid it all out.
He told the story of real estate tycoon Rakesh Khanna’s murder—not the version the world had heard, but the real one.
How Rathore had built Khanna from nothing, made him Mumbai’s construction king, and profited along the way. But power had changed Khanna. He started ignoring Rathore, cutting deals directly with top politicians. Rathore tried to pull him back, but Khanna brushed him off.
That was the last straw.
Rathore killed Khanna in cold blood—personally. Then called in Arjun Malik’s gang and asked for two disposable boys. He gunned them down in a fake encounter. Rathore made it look like those boys were the ones who killed Rakesh Khanna. Their faces were plastered across the news. The official story called them hired guns from Arjun Malik’s gang. The police claimed it was just another underworld hit—some unpaid extortion gone wrong. A convenient explanation, wrapped in a press note and swallowed by the media without question. No one questioned it. No one dared. Case closed. Silence bought.
“If those boys were the killers,” the masked Ravi asked in the video, “how did they breach an ex-commando's security with no inside help? How did they disappear, only to conveniently reappear as targets in a so-called shootout—or more accurately, a fake encounter staged to close the case?”
He paused.
“Because the plan was never to find killers. It was to create them.”
The video ended with a subtitle:
“Sent anonymously to expose truth. Do not ignore.”
Maya handed both USBs to Bobby the next night. He looked worse—sweaty, shivering, barely able to stand still. The signs were clear. He hadn’t scored his first heroin hit of the day. His hands trembled, eyes darting around, mind foggy and desperate. He was unraveling—chasing that next heroin dose like a drowning man gasping for air.
She gave him cash and clear instructions. “Send the first clip through your usual underworld contacts. Let it climb the ladder until it reaches Rathore. Don’t push—just let it rise like gossip. The second one—give it to one of those sting reporters who love breaking dirt. Make sure it feels like it dropped from nowhere.”
Bobby pocketed the drives and money. He nodded, said nothing, and disappeared into the night.
Maya watched the door long after he was gone.
Section 5: The Empire Erodes
Rathore didn’t just hear the audio. He felt it—like a needle sliding into his spine.
Patil and Pawar. Whispering about his downfall. Discussing other senior officers as alternatives. Saying they’d be the first ones sacrificed if he fell.
He played the clip six times that night. Slept none.
By morning, the video on Khanna’s murder had spread like wildfire. National news ran with it. The masked whistleblower. The killer conspiracy. Rathore’s name splashed across every screen like a wanted man.
And just like that, the empire he ruled through fear began to rot.
He responded the only way he knew how—rage.
Rathore didn’t have the authority to act alone. He didn’t even trust his own rank anymore. But he had dirt—decades of it—on politicians, senior cops, and even the home minister whose black money he once managed offshore. When they hesitated, he leaned in. Reminded them. Quietly. Firmly. And just like that, the commissioner issued transfer orders for Patil and Pawar. No explanation. No ceremony. Just a routine reshuffle—on paper. In reality, they were buried in irrelevant desk jobs far from any action.
Rathore didn’t stop there. A few junior constables—men who had done the actual dirty work in past encounters, tortures, cleanups—were also stripped out and scattered. He was swinging blindly now, unsure of who to trust. Senior officers advised caution. Told him to hold back. Let the heat die down. The memo, the blog, the clips—they’d pass like smoke.
But Rathore wasn’t listening anymore. His paranoia screamed louder than reason. He gutted his own killer squad—no shots fired, no blood spilled, but the damage was brutal. He didn’t trust anyone enough to rebuild. Instead of replacing them, he wiped the slate clean and left it empty.
His encounter squad—once the most feared unit in Mumbai—was reduced to a skeleton. A few rookies, a couple of drifting loyalists. Only one name still stood with weight: Deepak Rana. Senior inspector. Silent executor. The one man Rathore still believed wouldn’t flinch under pressure.
But even Rana was beginning to see it—Rathore was no longer feared. He was cracked.
Across the city, others noticed too.
Politicians who once used Rathore to settle scores began calling each other in hushed panic. If Rathore collapses, who will carry out the dirty jobs? Who will protect the secrets?
Senior cops who had looked the other way now talked of transferring him “before things get worse.”
Vikas Bhardwaj, the newly crowned underworld don—propped up by Rathore himself—saw it most clearly. His entire rise was tied to Rathore’s shadow. If Rathore collapsed, Vikas would be exposed. He wouldn’t survive a week in the power vacuum. The rival faction in the force didn’t owe him a thing. They’d toss him aside in a heartbeat for someone hungrier, easier to manage, and more willing to play by their rules.
Vikas started making calls of his own. Quiet ones. Just in case.
Even the media began to shift. Journalists who had once licked Rathore’s boots now turned to newer sources. The rival faction began feeding them. New headlines began to appear, favoring others. Rathore’s tip lines went silent.
The Mumbai underworld moved faster than everyone else. They smelled weakness before it showed. Runners disappeared. Old informants went silent. Arora Builders froze their payouts. A senior smuggler packed his family and vanished overnight. Rathore’s name, once feared like a god’s curse, had turned into a bad bet. The moment that happened, the street rule kicked in—cut ties, shift camps, survive. In that world, fear is currency. And Rathore was broke.
Section 6: The Mask Slips
Rathore struck back with what was left—raids, random arrests, and staged encounters.
But the intelligence leaked. Operations failed. Informants vanished before the first knock. His own team fed rivals.
One encounter went horribly wrong.
For once, Rathore had cornered a real gangster—a hardened drug smuggler known for slipping through every net. His intel team tracked the man to a highway stretch outside Vasai. No traffic. No chance of witnesses.
Rathore’s SUV blocked the car head-on. Shots fired before the gangster could blink. Three bullets tore through the windshield. The man slumped forward, head on the steering wheel, blood soaking his shirt. The constables felt for a pulse, saw the blood, and called it. Dead. No need to check again. They moved fast, just like always—bag the body, alert the hospital, get the paperwork moving before questions started. The body was hauled into an ambulance, rushed to a government hospital, and slotted for autopsy within the hour.
It was supposed to be routine—just another closed file.
Then came the horror.
Inside the autopsy room, just as the doctors unwrapped their tools—saws, scalpels, bone-cutters—the 'dead' body sat up and screamed.
One doctor collapsed in shock. The others backed away in terror, frozen mid-step. The room erupted in chaos.
Rathore was there, watching it all unfold. He had come to ensure the autopsy report would read clean—another perfect encounter, nothing contradictory, nothing suspicious. But now, staring at the bloodied man howling on the table, he knew it had all gone wrong.
He swore, loud and brutal. “Fucking idiots!”
His hand went to his holster by reflex. He could still fix this. One bullet and it’s done.
But Rana stepped in, voice low and sharp. “Sir, not here. Too many eyes. Cameras are rolling. One wrong move and this explodes bigger than you can contain.”
There were too many non-cops in the room. Too many eyes. Too much noise.
Rathore’s breathing slowed. His fist clenched. He backed off, muttering curses under his breath, but the damage was done.
The man on the table screamed again. “They waylaid me! Gave me no chance to surrender! They shot me and thought I was dead. I faked it. If I hadn’t, they’d have emptied the clip into me!”
The autopsy camera, still recording, caught it all—blood dripping, chest heaving, eyes wild.
“I’m alive! I’m not dead!”
No one—not even Rathore, a man who had orchestrated nearly a hundred encounters—realized what they'd forgotten. Not him, not Rana, not anyone in the gutted squad thought about the autopsy video recording. It should’ve been seized, wiped clean, buried. If anyone had asked, the standard excuse would’ve worked—“the video system malfunctioned that day.” But in the mess of botched encounter, panic, and shrinking control, no one followed through. Rathore’s paranoia, his thinning team, and his fading grip let the tape survive. And worst of all—it got leaked.
The footage went viral within hours.
TV anchors went into a frenzy. Social media caught fire. The headline wrote itself:
“Dead Man Wakes on Autopsy Table—Says Cops Tried to Kill Him in Fake Encounter.”
The man was rushed to emergency and survived.
His statement was short and searing.
“I stayed dead. If I moved, they would’ve finished the job.”
It was a disaster.
Rathore was summoned. First by the Commissioner. Then by the Home Minister himself. He was screamed at, shamed, told the incident had embarrassed the entire department. Senior officers warned him: one more misstep, and even they wouldn’t be able to protect him. But no one acted. Not really. Because Rathore wasn’t just a cop—he was a vault. Twenty years of dirty secrets, political cover-ups, offshore accounts, fake encounters, and power games lived inside his head. The very people scolding him knew—if Rathore ever opened his mouth, their careers, and their fortunes, would go up in smoke.
Everyone was angry. But everyone tiptoed. Because Rathore wasn’t just dangerous—he was wired with explosive knowledge. And treating him like any other officer was too risky. He wasn’t feared anymore, but he wasn’t disposable either. Not yet.
So they spun a story, filed the embarrassment, and hoped the city would move on. But Rathore knew better. So did Maya. The damage was done. The countdown had begun.
Section 7: The Collapse Begins
Rathore was reviewing summaries from his phone taps—something he had quietly running on everyone who mattered. One call stopped him cold.
Archana Devi.
The starlet. His latest indulgence. The woman he had housed in a luxury penthouse and gifted a high-end car. She was supposed to be exclusive—Rathore’s alone. He had made that clear from day one. Her loyalty was the price for everything she’d been given. And yet, here she was, crossing a line he thought was sealed.
But there she was, chatting with a notorious Bollywood pimp. A man known for supplying girls to high-society producers, politicians, and fixers.
Rathore hit the ceiling. His first instinct was to call Razor Raja and have Archana’s face slashed. He’d only ever unleashed Razor Raja on men before, but she might’ve been the first woman to taste that blade. One slice, and she’d go from glamorous starlet to horror show in seconds. Or maybe acid—one splash, and no one would look at her again. But that could wait. First, he needed to know exactly what she was up to.
A woman like Archana, pampered and protected, had no reason to stray. She had everything—money, power, and his name backing her. And yet, she was sniffing around for new deals.
He needed to know more.
He sent a low-level constable to quietly visit the pimp, who posed as an assistant director on film sets. The man broke easily. He’d met Archana on a film set. She’d reached out first. Wanted to "explore new options." She had sensed Rathore’s decline. And she was planning for the fall.
She wasn’t confused. She knew the game. She knew the rules.
Rathore was slipping—and she was already looking to be screwed by someone with more mileage left.
This was the last straw.
Even his bloody mistress, a Bollywood randi, didn’t believe in him anymore.
What the hell was happening?
Rathore stared blankly at the screen, seething. The world he built was burning, one betrayal at a time.
And he didn’t know how to stop it.
