Mano Majrans may not even know that the British have left or that India has been partitioned. He asks the subinspector of police if there has been any trouble between the religious groups and the latter assures him that there have not been any “convoys of dead Sikhs” as there have been in a nearby town. Hukum Chand, the magistrate and deputy commissioner, arrives to Mano Majra the morning before the dacoity. Jugga recognizes one as Malli-the gang’s leader. While the couple lays in the dark, they see the five robbers pass on their way to the river. Jugga, meanwhile, is having a tryst with Nooran when they hear the shots fired during the dacoity. While fleeing Ram Lal’s house, the robbers pass by the home of former robber Juggut Singh, known as the most dangerous man in Mano Majra and often called “Jugga.” One of the robbers throws stolen bangles into Jugga’s courtyard to implicate him in the crime. A tiny place with only three brick buildings-a gurdwara, where Meet Singh presides as its resident bhai a mosque led by the mullah and weaver Imam Baksh and the home of the Hindu moneylender, Lala Ram Lal-Mano Majra becomes the site of a notorious dacoity, which results in Ram Lal’s murder.

Northern India is in turmoil, though the isolated village of Mano Majra remains, for now, at peace. In the summer of 1947, ten million Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs flee from their homes on each side of the new border between Pakistan and India.

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