On the second evening, Nalini called. "The story publishes tomorrow morning. Six AM. The Wire, simultaneously with The Guardian South Asia desk and the Hindustan Times investigative unit. I brought in partners for speed and protection."
"The CBI?"
"They raided Kalyani's records at seven PM this evening. They have the servers." A pause. "Rao is in custody. Two administrators. The CEO is apparently in a private hospital in Juhu with a sudden medical emergency, which his lawyers are calling genuine and which I'm calling convenient." Dry, precise. "The Paritosh connection is in the story. We have the shareholding documentation, the Nashik donor family testimony, and three former Kalyani employees who agreed to speak on record."
"The active participants."
"The CBI has the registry. They're treating all active participants as victims and protected persons. There's a welfare team being deployed." A pause. "Priya. Kalyani's legal team filed a complaint against you this morning. Theft of proprietary medical records."
"I expected that."
"The CBI is preparing a counter-complaint that renders it moot. But you'll need legal support." She said a name. "She's the best medical whistleblower attorney in the country. She's expecting your call."
Priya was standing in Sunita's courtyard with the phone to her ear and the night air of the settlement around her — cookfires, the generator, children who should have been in bed, the ordinary sound of people living their lives in a place that had been treated, by people with money and resources, as a supply chain.
"The story is enough?" she said. "The files, the testimonies — it's enough?"
"It's enough," Nalini said. "It's more than enough. One hundred and nine people are named in the story. With their real names, their real ages, what happened to them. Their families will know the truth."
One hundred and nine people, named.
Priya sat down on the courtyard steps. Sunita appeared in the doorway with tea, looked at her face, left the tea and went back inside. Sometimes the right thing was tea and silence, and Sunita always knew which was which.
