Rohit Kapoor was arrested on the fourth day after the filing. The two men from the safehouse were traced to a private security contractor whose payments led to a Kapoor Industries account. Combined with the financial evidence Priya had compiled and the ED's own expanding investigation, the case was what his lawyers immediately recognised it as: substantial, well-constructed, and very difficult to manage away.
He was held on remand. Kapoor Industries' accounts were frozen. The political dimension — the contract influence, the funding vehicle — expanded the investigation into two other figures who had been on the receiving end of the infrastructure steering.
Malhotra handled the public dissolution of the engagement with the careful precision of a man who had been wrong and was not going to compound the wrong by dissembling about it. The statement was brief and dignified and said nothing that wasn't true: the engagement had been ended by mutual decision in light of newly discovered information. He did not make himself a victim. He simply said what was factual and moved on.
Priya's water distribution project was published two weeks after the safehouse. The chain that Arjun had suggested worked exactly as he had outlined. The report created the kind of difficulty for the municipal corporation that it was designed to create, and three of the ward-level maintenance disparities became the subject of a legislative committee inquiry within a month.
