In the winter of a nation still finding its footing, the most important branch of the State Bank of India, at Parliament Street in Delhi receives a phone call -one that appears to come from the highest office in the land. Sixty lakh rupees are quietly withdrawn and delivered to a man waiting near the Bible Society, without a weapon, with a password "Bangladesh Ka Babu" , without resistance.
Within four days, the crime is declared solved: the culprit arrested, tried, and sentenced. The speed is unprecedented; the certainty, deeply unsettling. And the man at the centre of it all — Sohrab Poonawala — neither defends himself like an innocent nor confesses like a criminal.
As journalists, soldiers, bureaucrats, and refugees move through a country on the brink—between war and diplomacy, secrecy and survival—another story begins to surface. One of borders crossed in silence, identities carefully erased, and operations conducted far from paper trails and parliamentary oversight. In refugee camps, courtrooms, and government offices, lives intersect in ways history chose not to record. A young reporter senses that something essential has been buried. A retired soldier recognizes a man he believed lost in the mountains of Tibet. And a nation, poor, overstretched, and newly sovereign, asks men to do what cannot be acknowledged once done.
Spanning two turbulent decades, Sohrab is a work of historical fiction rooted in real events—an intimate portrait of intelligence work before acronyms became institutions, and patriotism demanded anonymity. It is a story of moral compromise and quiet courage, of loyalty that survives without recognition. Above all, it asks a lingering question: when the state needs a man to disappear, what happens when he refuses to remain forgotten?
