She was back in her hotel room when the first follow-up came. She had been trying to sleep again — the ten hours the previous night had apparently not been enough, there was still a quality of tiredness that sat behind her eyes and did not respond to normal rest. Her phone showed a notification from the Directorate's field data portal: Submission CG-2024-NDV-0847 — Administrative Review Required. Please contact Data Quality Officer.
She called the Data Quality Officer number. A woman answered — calm, efficient, the voice of someone who managed review queries all day. "Ms. Saxena? I see you've submitted field data for Nandgaon, Chhattisgarh. I have a flag on the submission."
"What kind of flag?" she said.
"The GPS coordinates you've submitted are — I want to make sure I'm reading this correctly — they correspond to a location that the land use database has categorised as uninhabited forest. Category 4, sub-classification—" A pause. Papers rustling. "Sub-classification C. Civil emergency."
"Yes," Meera said. "I know. The village was classified as uninhabited, but it has residents. That's what the field verification found — the settlement is active and has been incorrectly categorised in the records. The verification is supposed to correct exactly this kind of discrepancy."
"Yes, I understand the purpose of the verification," the officer said, in the careful tone of someone who understood the purpose and was also aware of something else. "The issue is the specific sub-classification. Category 4-C is not just uninhabited — it's a specific designation for settlements evacuated following what the colonial records called 'events resulting in no living residents.' Not depopulation by outmigration. The sub-classification refers to — full mortality events."
A silence.
"A massacre," Meera said. "You're saying the sub-classification is for a massacre site."
"The colonial records and the 1947-48 district administration records use the term 'complete evacuation' but the sub-classification—" The officer paused. "We cross-referenced the historical records when the flag came up. Ms. Saxena, the Nandgaon records from August 1947 indicate that the district administration documented a mortality event affecting the full resident population of the settlement. Two hundred and forty-seven persons recorded as deceased. The land was vested to the state because there were no surviving residents to vest it to."
Two hundred and forty-seven.
Not two hundred and thirty-one. Not the number Ramdas had told her. The official count was two hundred and forty-seven. All of them. Every single person recorded in the 1947 district register as a resident of Nandgaon.
