The crowd of lawyers gathered outside the courthouse rustled with the sharp flutter of black coats, each man clutching files of his struggles close to his chest like battle-worn shields as he darted through the chaos.
Amid that throng of noise and restless motion, an old, crumbling cement wall bore a faded poster, half-stuck with dust, trembling lightly in the breeze. Its words read: "Justice for All."
The letters had paled with time, their edges stained by raindrops, yet to Arjun, standing beneath it, the sentence cut like a blade: "Justice for all?" it seemed to ask. "Truly?"
For a moment, Arjun closed his eyes. In the clamor of the courts, he felt another trial unfolding within himself, one where verdicts were not delivered on paper but whispered through memories, fears, and unanswered questions.He drew a deep breath, steadied himself, and stepped into the crowd as though he were not heading to an ordinary hearing, but to confront the hardest truth of his life.
Yet the question lingered in his mind: "Truly?"
The moment he entered the courtroom, his gaze locked onto the thick file in the policeman's hand. Bound with blue thread, its edges worn thin, it looked like a bundle containing the very threads of his fate.
As the file was placed on the table, it landed with a soft thud. To Arjun, it felt like a fist striking his heart.
The proceedings unfolded slowly. Witnesses spoke. Papers were presented. The judge listened with a stern face, occasionally nodding or asking sharp questions. Every word felt like a step on a fragile bridge.
Suyash opened the file. With every page turned came a faint rustle, and each rustle made Arjun feel as if someone had breathed life back into his lungs.
Arjun's eyes welled up. These were not tears of fear, but of relief, tears that had been imprisoned within him for months, now desperate to break free. No words escaped his lips.Yet beneath this wave of solace, a quiet unrest remained, as though some unspoken truth still stirred in a hidden corner of his mind, demanding to be known, insisting on confrontation.
Suyash placed a hand on Arjun's shoulder. There was nothing formal in that touch, no distance between lawyer and client; it was simply one human being steadying another whose breath had been shattered.
His voice was calm, yet the words carried an assurance that flickered like a lamp's flame in darkness—steady, enduring:"You don't need to say anything to the court, Arjun.
The papers are speaking for themselves now.
They have already written it, you are innocent."
Arjun's eyelids brimmed over. The pain, humiliation, and silent cries of his innocence, accumulated over months, flowed out one by one in those tears.But then Suyash's voice faltered.
"What is this…?"
"Where did these pages come from?"
"This RTI reply was never even sent!"Arjun's eyes widened. "What?"The first page carried a piercing truth: "
Inquiry regarding missing persons—Likely Civil Dispute."Meaning Arjun was not being treated as a criminal, but as part of a private family matter.
The second page listed the last known locations of Shreya, Naman, and his family—in an entirely different city, far from Arjun's own.
When Suyash reached the third page, his fingers paused. A faint layer of dust clung to the edges, as if a truth long buried in some forgotten cabinet had suddenly been brought into the light. The file's creases resembled old wounds—dry on the surface, yet the pain beneath still raw. Phone's last tower location. Then: "Device switched off."
Below it, in bold letters: "No signs of abduction or violence" and "No evidence of forcible kidnapping."
Arjun's heart began to hammer wildly in his chest. It felt as if an invisible hand had seized his shoulder and shaken him violently, yet no one was there. He held his breath and followed Suyash's gaze. And then… that page.The page he had desperately sought for months, caught between despair and hope.
As Suyash slowly turned it toward him, Arjun's eyes caught on the words—first blurred, then cruelly sharp.Phone's last tower location. "Device switched off."
And beneath it, in heavy type: "No signs of abduction or violence" / "No evidence of forcible kidnapping."
These words struck Arjun like an earthquake. It was as though the paper itself were shouting the truth at him, yet an unseen force held him in its grip. The courtroom buzzed with voices and footsteps, but a chill ran down his spine—born of fear, doubt, and the shattering of illusions.
He stared at the page again. The words remained fixed, but his heartbeat did not. It pounded like an untamed drum against his ribs.It no longer felt like mere paper. It felt like a hammer breaking open the ground beneath him."Switched off…" The phrase pierced him.
It was not simply a phone going dead. It was an entire story plunging suddenly into darkness.The official line below—"No signs of violence or abduction"—might have sounded routine in judicial language, but for Arjun, it did not remove accusations. Instead, it opened an entire forest of new questions.If there had been no abduction, where had they gone?
Why had they gone?
And why without telling anyone—not even the police?
Arjun's eyes refused to leave the page, as if searching the dust for some hidden letter that might whisper, "This is all wrong."The sound of his own heartbeat grew deafening. The noises of the courtroom melted and receded, leaving him alone with the pale face of that document, which now revealed the darkest truth of his life.
Suyash gently touched his arm. "Arjun, you don't need to fear these words. They are exonerating you." But inside Arjun, something else was unfolding—a storm of relief, guilt, confusion, and a strange, lingering unease.
Being exonerated was one thing, but the disappearance of Shreya's family was something else entirely—an altogether different kind of darkness, one without name, direction, or conclusion. This page had, for the first time, made him feel that the story was perhaps not as straightforward as the world believed.
Suyash glanced at him quietly. "These people… they left the house of their own accord. There was no abduction."
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