The Dangerous Trail

Eyes and ears on the ground

The team had settled down in Bangalore although the office had still some work ongoing which would get completed in the upcoming weeks. They had an early morning briefing where the teams would update on the progress.

Minutes from today's briefing as circulated to the Operation Sangam team:

Companies identified with post box code do not exist which indicates these are front companies which might have been used for hawala transactions. There is no trace of the directors or anything about the companies. There is one company called XYZ imports whose one registered owner was traced but did not reveal much information. This target A had put up an advertisement in one of the local dailies about a Tours & Travels for arranging trips to Dubai, Istanbul and MiddleEast. Although the target A was not questioned on this tours & travels but needs to be trailed as there is an uncanny co-incidence. The Tours &Travels could be a front for carrying out illegal operations.

The communications team has roped in support from the cyber cell and they are looking at social media groups which have had lot of activity when these ads were put up in the newspaper. They are a whole lot of them so they would need time to scan through each to figure out which ones will be the target group to embed an asset. They were looking at some popular colleges in Mumbai & Bangalore to cultivate an asset who could lead them to the closed group network and their communications. They would need funding to cultivate the drug habit of the asset to get the information they need.

From the human trail there is target B who is the dead truck driver who was probably a link to the trade. There is his bio-data which has all the information and interestingly belongs to a small village in Karwar(coast of Karnataka) which has off late noticed a lot of spurt in illegal activities.

The financial team were trying their sources in other departments to get their contacts in Dubai to find out the transaction details of SR , our main target's transaction details in banks.

Suman had pointed out that if this truck driver was travelling in this route frequently then they could look at some of the red light areas that fall on this route because there is a high chance that he might frequent one of these brothels and probably have someone specific , just in case and it would be easy for them to find more details of his operations. Shravan was more familiar with the route and had assets who would provide updates to him so he decided to take Suman and introduce him to some of his informers so they could use them to get more information. Suvan started out in Shravan's car to meet the ears and eyes of Shravan. Shravan noticed that Suman was a little upset so on the way so he asked her "what it is that is bothering you ". Suman's voice wavered a little when she mentioned that although she knew that these were a part of the profession and the only way to get information but she was not comfortable about using a couple of young kids of colleges to cultivate them as assets by funding their drug habit. Shravan felt the deep agony in her voice and he was helpless as this is something a part of their job. He placed his hand on hers and just rubbed his fingers over her cold ones and assured her to be brave for a greater cause.Maybe one day they can help such people when they do not have any pressures of the system to use not so very ethical ways of doing things. Suman flashed her beautiful smile and Shravan was lost again and Suman had to jump up on her seat to hold the wheel of the car before they hit a vegetable cart on the way.

Suvan had driven for more than 2 hrs to reach the outskirts of the city. It was a bright sunny morning when they started , a little windy which had kept the temperatures in check although it was warm afternoon when they drove on to the Puganur-Mulbagal road which led towards the Andhra border. Shravan had offered Suman lot of insights on the Maoists belt as he suspected that if the truck driver was part of the chain then he must be using this route to enter Andhra after coming from Karwar into Bangalore. They had checked on the truck that NCB had captured some time back with the same truck driver and traced it to be associated with a truck company in Karwar. Based on the hunch and assumption they were hoping Target B was still part of the chain and probably the transporter mainly on the Karwar-Bangalore-Andhra-Odisha borders which is a Maoist belt and from there probably he had entered Maharashtra or maybe directly he might have taken the route from Karwar via the western ghats to Maharashtra. Shravan was moving ahead with the first option and he was hoping his informants will be able to help him. On the national highway they stopped a little distance away from a seemingly busy dhaba having small little houses behind it. Shravan explained to Suman that these were the first brothels on this road and since this was a transport route , they generally have lot of information.