Tushar Deb
1
The night train rumbled through the sleepy heart of Bihar, its windows reflecting the ghostly blue of an almost-full moon. The Guwahati–Delhi Express was known for its long, uneventful journey through forests, fields, and forgotten towns, but no one paid attention to one particular stop: Dharmapur Junction. It wasn’t printed on any timetable. There were no signboards, no platform lights—just an old concrete slab, shrouded by neem trees and thick fog, where the train inexplicably paused for sixteen minutes every single year on the same day. On that cold February night, passengers were either snoring under woolen blankets or scrolling endlessly through their phones, heads bobbing to the rhythm of the coach. In Coach S4, Berth 37, a young woman named Nina Das, traveling to Delhi for a scholarship interview, quietly updated her mother via WhatsApp and then leaned back into the thin pillow. Two hours later, when the train crossed into Uttar Pradesh, the TTE came by to check tickets again. Berth 37 was empty. Her bag was still there, zipped. Her blanket lay folded on the side. There were no witnesses, no screams, no signs of struggle. She was simply gone. A general murmur ran through the coach, but nobody took it too seriously—it was India, people got off at night all the time. The train kept moving. At 5:40 AM, it pulled into Kanpur. By then, the disappearance was noted, filed, and forgotten. Just another mystery that would be buried in railway bureaucracy.
In Shillong, Rhea Thomas woke with a jolt. She’d dreamt of her cousin Anaya, who had vanished on that very same train two years ago. The coincidence was eerie—both girls had been last seen in Coach S4, traveling alone, and both had disappeared at night with their phones still logged in but unreachable. Rhea rubbed her eyes and sat up, surrounded by half-finished coffee mugs and sticky notes. Her laptop screen glowed faintly, still showing an open missing-persons database she’d been combing through all night. Then, at 7:11 AM, an auto-alert pinged on her inbox: “One new missing person record matching your search tags.” She clicked. Name: Nina Das. Coach: S4. Date: February 14. Status: Untraced. Location last seen: Dharmapur Junction (unverified halt). Rhea’s heart thudded. She had gone down this road before—cold trails, unanswered RTIs, indifferent railway officials, and a police system that dismissed “young women vanishing” as either elopements or emotional runaways. But this time, it felt different. She opened an encrypted spreadsheet on her desktop, which tracked over two dozen disappearances across seven years—all from the Guwahati–Delhi route. One name on that list stood out: Animesh Dutta, a now-retired CBI officer, who had once investigated a similar case in 2009, before retiring under mysterious circumstances. The case was later sealed and archived. She decided it was time. She packed her camera, voice recorder, and notebook, caught the 9:00 AM cab, and booked a ticket to Siliguri to meet him.
Meanwhile, Animesh Dutta, with his silver hair combed neatly back and thick glasses resting on his nose, sat by the balcony of his modest Siliguri home, sipping strong tea and reading The Statesman. The page carried a barely-noticed article about the disappearance of a student on a train near Patna. His eyes paused at the coach number—S4. Then at the timing: around midnight, sixteen-minute halt. The same pattern. The same train. A memory tugged at the edge of his mind—an old file, long buried, and a voice crying for help across static phone lines. He lit a clove cigarette and reached for the drawer beneath his study. From it, he pulled out an old brown file labeled “D-16/2009”, frayed at the corners. Inside were black-and-white photos, an old tunnel map, and a single, chilling note from a witness: “They walked into the tunnel, and never walked back.” Just then, his doorbell rang. A young woman stood outside, windblown hair, fierce eyes, and a worn leather satchel across her shoulder. “Mr. Dutta,” she said, holding up her press card. “My name is Rhea Thomas. I believe you know why I’m here.” Animesh didn’t speak. He looked into her eyes—and saw the reflection of a case that refused to die. In the distance, a goods train groaned past. The metal tracks beneath it hummed with secrets. Somewhere in those sixteen missing minutes, a shadow waited to be found.
2
Rhea sat across from Animesh in the dim light of his study, the ceiling fan ticking overhead like a metronome to their growing tension. The room smelled faintly of old paper, mothballs, and the burnt edge of his half-smoked clove cigarette that rested beside a rusted ashtray. She spread her notes on the wooden desk—maps, case clippings, missing persons reports—all carefully marked with red circles and timestamps. Animesh leaned forward without a word, his eyes narrowing as they scanned the printed names. His fingers trembled slightly as they hovered over one particular photo: Anaya Sharma, Rhea’s cousin. “She disappeared on the same day… same train… same coach,” Rhea whispered, her voice tight with restraint. “And no one—no one—can explain how a human being can vanish from a train seat in the middle of a journey without anyone noticing.” Animesh slowly opened a drawer, pulling out the frayed folder labeled “D-16/2009,” laying it beside her own stack. “I tried,” he said. “Fifteen years ago. The girl was named Manju Soren. Age seventeen. Tribal. On her way to Delhi for a dance competition. Coach S4. February 14. Disappeared between Kishanganj and Patna. The file was shut in four weeks. I was told to drop it.” He looked up at her then, his eyes gleaming behind the glass lenses. “But there’s something you don’t know. I received a call the day after her disappearance… from a man whispering a phrase I’ll never forget: ‘The tunnel still breathes.’” Rhea blinked. “What tunnel?” Animesh tapped the edge of a yellowed paper folded inside the file. “One the government claims no longer exists.”
Later that afternoon, they visited the Railway Archives Office in Siliguri—a red-brick building nearly forgotten by time, where files were stored like tombs. Animesh’s old ID got them limited access to restricted records, and after hours of digging, they unearthed a decommissioned blueprint of the British-era loop line between Dharmapur and Bhavangola, which included a tunnel labeled only as “Tunnel 12-A”. According to official documents, the tunnel had collapsed during the 1942 Quit India Movement and was never rebuilt. Yet, local reports from as late as 1998 mentioned a “ghost track” near Dharmapur where lights were seen flickering at night. “The tunnel wasn’t buried,” Animesh said grimly, “it was hidden.” They also found old freight manifests with inconsistencies—phantom cargo that boarded at Dharmapur but was never logged on arrival. Rhea couldn’t believe how deep the rot ran. “This was a ghost corridor,” she muttered. “For what? Human trafficking?” Animesh didn’t answer. Instead, he walked over to a dusty shelf and pulled out a weathered black ledger—an inventory log. Flipping pages, he stopped abruptly. His finger tapped a strange pattern: every February 14, the Guwahati–Delhi Express was delayed by exactly sixteen minutes near Signal KM 431, right before Dharmapur. “It’s too clean to be a coincidence,” he muttered. “Delays are normal. But the same day, the same halt, every year? That’s a schedule, not an accident.” They both knew it now. These weren’t scattered disappearances. This was a system. Someone was orchestrating it, and they were using that sixteen-minute window like a dark postal exchange—trading human lives under the nose of the railway network.
By the time they stepped out into the early dusk, the air was cold and tasted of dust. Rhea’s phone buzzed—an unknown number. A distorted male voice on the other end said, “You’re chasing ghosts. They will bury you next.” Then silence. She looked at Animesh, shaken. “They know we’re looking.” Animesh nodded, unsurprised. “They’ve always been watching. That’s why this stopped being solved a long time ago.” He led her to an old contact—Constable Ganesh Rawat, now posted as Station In-Charge at Dharmapur Junction, whom Animesh remembered from a raid in 2010. Over a call, Ganesh agreed to meet them discreetly the next morning. “But not at the station,” he warned. “Come to the old rest house. We’ll talk there.” That night, Rhea stayed at a railway guest lodge. She barely slept. Her mind kept returning to the name etched into one page of Animesh’s file: Nizam Bhai – alias unknown – unconfirmed leader, Northeast Corridor trafficking ring – file marked dormant 2011. Rhea stared at the ceiling fan, listening to its hum match the rhythm of train wheels far away. Somewhere along those rails, another girl was probably boarding tonight—laughing, hopeful, unaware. And sixteen minutes would be all it took to vanish. Rhea knew then—this wasn’t just about her cousin anymore. This was a machine, a ritual, an invisible railway beneath the real one. And she and Animesh were going to follow that track—no matter where it ended.
3
The Guwahati–Delhi Express hissed gently at Platform 2 under a tired dusk sky in New Jalpaiguri, its steel body groaning like an old animal preparing for a long journey. Rhea and Animesh boarded the train from opposite ends—she took Coach S4, the fated coach, while Animesh slipped into Coach B2, posing as an aging professor. Their strategy was simple: observe, record, and map every anomaly during the route, especially around the Dharmapur segment, which was still not mentioned in the official stop list. Rhea had packed light—just a backpack, her voice recorder, and her grandmother’s leather-bound notebook filled with travel codes and cryptic markings. She sat by the window, trying not to stare at her fellow passengers: a young mother with a silent toddler, two techies engrossed in their screens, and a stoic-looking man in a pale green kurta who kept checking the time on his old Nokia. Across from her was an elderly woman with a red scarf tied around her head—an ordinary accessory, except it looked exactly like the one her cousin Anaya had worn the day she disappeared. Rhea’s throat tightened, but she forced herself to stay composed. She pulled out her phone and began recording notes softly, timestamping everything: passenger behaviors, minor route changes, even the chai vendors’ voices. In Coach B2, Animesh struck up a conversation with a friendly ex-army man who mentioned, in passing, that he had heard of “ghost trains” along this line—rumors of compartments that went dark for a few minutes, returning to normal as if nothing had happened. “Nothing official,” he added. “But there’s always something off between Katihar and Ara.”
As the train picked up speed through the humid fields of Bihar, the atmosphere in the coaches began to subtly shift. In Rhea’s compartment, the young mother suddenly changed berths with the silent man in the green kurta without a word exchanged. The techies packed their laptops and disappeared into the pantry car for an unusually long time. The old lady with the red scarf rummaged through her bag and dropped something—a crumpled photo of Anaya Sharma, aged and water-damaged. Rhea froze, then leaned down to pick it up. “You dropped this,” she whispered. The woman snatched it back quickly, muttering in Bengali, “I don’t know her. You’re mistaken.” But her trembling hands said otherwise. Rhea’s heart raced. She sent Animesh a discreet message: “Coach S4 – scarf, Anaya photo. Elderly woman, mid-sixties. Eyes evasive.” Meanwhile, Animesh noticed something odd during a walk past Coach S6. A pantry boy with no visible name tag walked into a staff compartment and never came back out. He waited outside for ten minutes—no one came or went. When he asked another staffer, they insisted no one matching that description was working that night. More strange still, two off-duty railway constables in plain clothes sat at the end of the coach, speaking in hushed Hindi, phrases like “shipment will be ready this time” and “only 16 minutes—we move fast.” Animesh returned to his seat and began sketching a timeline of events, trying to overlay old case data with real-time clues. He circled three numbers again and again in his notebook: 16: Dharmapur; 37: Coach S4 berth; 431: Signal marker. Every pattern kept leading back to those coordinates. The puzzle wasn’t just real—it was repeating like a sinister clockwork.
As the train neared Ara Junction, passengers began settling into their berths for the night. The fans hummed overhead, and the rhythmic rattle of tracks dulled into a lullaby for some. But not for Rhea. She sat upright, hands resting on her audio recorder, eyes fixed on the now-silent old woman across from her, who had pulled the red scarf down low over her eyes and was pretending to sleep. Rhea reviewed the metadata from her voice logs—at least two voices from the compartment had not spoken aloud, yet they appeared faintly on playback, like whispers from just beneath the surface. One whispered word repeated: “Nizam.” At the same time, Animesh moved toward the pantry car under the pretense of needing water and passed by a locked utility door, from behind which came a strange metallic clinking sound—like chains being dragged. As he turned to return, the off-duty constables were gone. No one had seen them disembark. He paused by the window and noticed something impossible—a faint red light glowing in the distant field, running parallel to the tracks. It was too far for a signal post. It looked more like a beacon, almost ceremonial. Just then, Rhea’s phone buzzed: “Train slowing. Approaching unlisted junction.” The clock on the coach wall showed 12:16 AM. She stood, looked outside—and there it was: Dharmapur, ghost-like in its silence. No lights. No station master. No dogs barking. But on the far end of the platform, three shadowy figures were loading something into a goods wagon. She reached for her phone. The moment had come. Sixteen minutes began ticking now—and with it, the fragile line between evidence and oblivion.
4
The train groaned to a near-silent halt at Dharmapur Junction, and for a long moment, it felt as though time itself had paused. There were no announcements, no staff voices on the intercom, no flicker of station life. Just fog—thick, crawling fog that seeped in through the open windows like a living thing. Rhea peered out cautiously. The platform was cracked, covered in weeds, and half-swallowed by the encroaching wild. A broken bench leaned against a rusted lamppost, and behind it, the silhouette of a watchtower stood like a grave marker from a forgotten war. Her breath caught as her eyes adjusted. Near the far edge of the platform, just outside the circle of the fog, three men were loading a heavy crate into a goods wagon marked with no railway logo—no numbers, no official tags, just a faint red cross spray-painted on its flank. The men moved like professionals, wordless and fast, dressed in faded uniforms that didn’t quite match any known railway division. Rhea clicked on her voice recorder and began whispering details into the mic, but the moment she raised her phone to take a picture, one of the men suddenly turned and looked directly at her window, eyes glinting in the dark like a predator sensing movement in the brush. She ducked instinctively. Inside the compartment, all was still—most passengers were asleep, unaware they were suspended in this surreal interval where logic didn’t seem to apply. From somewhere behind her berth, she heard a soft gasp. Turning her head slowly, she realized the elderly woman with the red scarf was gone. Her shawl was still draped over the seat. Her slippers were on the floor. But she had vanished into thin air—like smoke.
In Coach B2, Animesh had already stepped off the train with his coat collar turned up and his walking stick clicking softly on the gravel. His instincts were sharp despite the years. He remembered the platform from old reports—though now it seemed even more derelict, with long grass growing between broken cement slabs. No station sign. No clock. No security presence. He walked towards the overgrown end where a chain-link fence sagged against a collapsed stone wall. Behind the fence, partly hidden by banyan roots, was the object of his years of obsession: Tunnel 12-A. Its blackened mouth yawned wide and deep, like a wound in the earth. Around it lay evidence of recent human presence—discarded cigarette butts, fresh boot prints in the mud, and an oil lantern still faintly warm. Just as he moved to investigate, a figure lunged at him from the shadows—knife glinting in the dark. Animesh barely deflected the blow, his stick connecting with the man’s forearm in a sharp crack. The attacker didn’t speak. He turned and fled into the tunnel, vanishing within seconds. Animesh’s heart pounded, not just from the narrow escape, but from the realization that someone had been watching the tunnel tonight—guarding it. He reached into his coat and pulled out a small flashlight, directing its beam into the tunnel’s mouth. He saw what looked like a rail trolley and behind it, a recently oiled track, half-submerged in water. The tunnel wasn’t dead. It was active. He began photographing everything: the track, the footprints, the broken lock on the old gate. Behind him, the train engine gave a low moan of steam—fifteen minutes had passed. One minute left. He turned to head back, but as he climbed the steps, he noticed a small object glinting under the bench at the edge of the platform. It was a woman’s silver anklet, delicate and etched with dancing peacocks. He picked it up and closed his eyes. Another girl had gone. Just like the rest.
Back inside the train, the atmosphere had shifted in a way that defied logic. The lights flickered once, twice, then held steady—but the entire coach now seemed one soul quieter. A berth across from Rhea was empty. She remembered a college student with glasses had been sitting there. She asked a woman nearby, “Where’s the guy in the brown hoodie?” The woman blinked. “What guy?” Rhea looked at the phone gallery—no photos of the boy. She had seen him. She remembered him. But now, it was as if he had never been there at all. Panic prickled her skin. She rushed toward the coach door just as the train gave a powerful jerk, screeching forward once more. The sixteen minutes were up. She looked back out the window. Dharmapur had already vanished into the mist like a bad dream. Breathing heavily, she walked the narrow aisle to meet Animesh in the vestibule between S4 and B2. He was pale, dust on his knees, holding up the silver anklet. Rhea stared at it, eyes wide. “It’s hers,” she said, barely audible. “Anaya had one exactly like that. My grandmother gave it to her.” Animesh nodded. “She was here,” he said. “They brought her through the tunnel.” They sat down in silence, the train roaring ahead into the blackness of early dawn. No announcements. No panic. As if nothing had happened. Around them, passengers yawned, stretched, resumed conversations. But for Rhea and Animesh, something had shifted permanently—they had looked directly into the mouth of a machine that fed on people, using the silence of fog and the rhythm of steel wheels to cover its tracks. They knew now that the next step was to follow the tunnel, not the train. The mystery wasn’t riding the rails anymore—it was buried beneath them.
5
The next morning, Rhea and Animesh reached a quiet tea stall near the foot of Dharmapur’s abandoned rest house, far from the public eye. The building stood like a forgotten relic from the colonial era—its white paint flaked off in strips, the wooden veranda creaked under its own weight, and wild creepers had swallowed the signage. There, in the shade of an old pipal tree, waited Constable Ganesh Rawat, his khaki uniform faded and his boots stained with red soil. His eyes, however, were sharp, twitching toward every passing sound, as though he lived in a state of constant alert. “You shouldn’t have come back here,” he muttered without preamble, pouring tea from his steel flask into three chipped cups. “They know you were on the train. They always know.” Animesh raised an eyebrow. “They?” Ganesh chuckled bitterly. “The ones who operate beneath. Not ghosts, not demons—just men with secrets, and power.” As the sun climbed higher, Ganesh told them about his last twenty years stationed near Dharmapur—how every year, on the same date, the train halted without explanation. His official logs were edited or deleted. Requests for reinforcement were denied. “Once I asked my superior why we weren’t reporting the halts. He got transferred within a week. No farewell, no forwarding address.” Then, lowering his voice, he leaned closer. “There’s someone who saw what you’re looking for. Someone who worked that track when the tunnel was still active. But he’s not… normal anymore.” Rhea frowned. “You mean he’s crazy?” Ganesh looked at her flatly. “I mean he remembers too much. Go to Madhav Bhardwaj, old signalman. Lives near the river bend. Talks to ghosts, they say. Or maybe he just talks to the ones no one else can hear.”
They found Madhav “Chacha” Bhardwaj living in a mud house that leaned against the base of an ancient banyan tree, surrounded by rusting railway tools and broken lanterns. He was in his late seventies, skin leathered like cured tobacco, white beard tangled in knots. He sat cross-legged on the porch, talking into a transistor radio that emitted only static. “They say I’m mad,” he muttered, eyes never meeting theirs. “But the tracks still speak. They hum at night. You hear them too, don’t you?” Animesh knelt beside him, placing the silver anklet on the porch floor. Madhav stared at it, his eyes suddenly clear, focused. “She walked into the tunnel,” he said, almost dreamily. “She followed the ones in black coats. They promised her a job, a new life. She didn’t come back. None of them do.” Rhea asked gently, “What happens inside the tunnel?” Madhav looked toward the distance, toward the phantom tracks buried in vines. “There’s a door. A second door. Not visible from outside. Built by the British. Used by the syndicate now. They take them in from one end, and send out empty crates from the other.” His fingers twitched as he drew lines in the dust—two tunnels converging at a dead-end chamber marked by an iron sigil. “They light fires inside. Sometimes I see shadows moving without feet. I hear girls crying. The last one… she called out. She wore silver on her ankles.” Rhea’s voice trembled. “Did you see her face?” Madhav nodded. “She looked like you.” The silence that followed was thick and suffocating. Then he whispered, “They never take the train back. They are moved beneath.” Animesh scribbled frantic notes as Rhea turned pale. Every thread led deeper, not forward. The railway was a cover, a distraction. The true system—the criminal bloodstream—flowed through the old colonial veins, underground, unregistered, and perfectly timed. “Can you take us to the other end of the tunnel?” Animesh asked. Madhav hesitated, then slowly pointed north. “Not by train. By foot. Through the forest. But go only at dusk. They watch during the day.”
That evening, the two followed Madhav’s directions along a dirt trail leading through a thicket of sal trees, brambles scraping at their legs, the cries of cicadas echoing around them. It was a two-hour walk under a darkening sky before they saw it: a slope of earth half-collapsed over what looked like a concrete archway, barely visible behind a curtain of vines. The second entrance. Rhea’s pulse thundered in her ears as she and Animesh crawled closer, careful not to disturb the silence. From inside, they could smell damp stone, engine grease, and something fainter—the unmistakable odor of human sweat and fear. They peered inside with flashlights. The tunnel yawned endlessly, tracks still running clean and polished—recently used. There were boot prints, cigarette stubs, and a discarded ID card with a faded photo of a woman labeled Sangeeta R, Age 22. They crept in for a few meters, holding their breath, taking photographs, until they found it: a side corridor bricked halfway, but open enough for a crouched person to pass. Just as they were about to enter, a faint sound echoed through the tunnel—a distant mechanical screech, like a cart moving over iron rails. Then, voices. Male. Approaching. Rhea and Animesh froze, their flashlights snapped off instantly. They slid behind a stone pillar as two men passed, pushing a trolley. One muttered, “Only three today. Boss says they’ll be moved before dawn.” The other replied, “Train’s on time. As always.” The cart vanished into darkness. Rhea exhaled slowly. This was it—the proof. She had recordings, photos, voices. They’d infiltrated the edge of the operation. But as they carefully backed out into the forest, a realization gripped them: they weren’t chasing shadows anymore. They had stepped into the system itself—and now, it knew they were coming. The hunt had begun.
6
Back in Patna two days later, Rhea sat inside a modest café, staring at a plastic cup of coffee gone cold. The city was bustling around her, unaware of the dark arterial network that pulsed beneath its train lines. Her fingers trembled slightly as she reviewed the tunnel footage again on her phone—grainy, shaky, but real. Faces could be seen in the shadows. Voices, though distorted, were audible. Yet the video meant little unless she could connect it to someone high enough to shatter the impunity that cloaked the operation. That’s when her contact in the local press, a young data journalist named Fazal, handed her a USB drive. “This,” he whispered, “is from inside the Prerna Shelter Home, just outside Arrah. They’re funded by half a dozen NGOs but have zero verifiable records of girls leaving through official channels.” Rhea’s brow furrowed. “Shelter home?” Fazal nodded. “A pipeline. Girls vanish from trains, and many ‘reappear’ as orphans under fake names at shelters like this. Three months later, they’re gone again. No paperwork. No exit trail.” Rhea’s skin prickled with unease. On the USB, she found surveillance footage from the shelter’s backyard—blurry night recordings, where a white van would arrive around 2:30 a.m. and leave fifteen minutes later. In one clip, the van’s back doors opened, revealing two girls huddled inside—blindfolded. Fazal added, “The man who runs this shelter? Charming, educated, even gives lectures at women’s colleges. Locals call him Nizam Bhai.” Rhea’s heart stopped at the name. She had heard it in the tunnel, seen it scrawled in Animesh’s notebook, and now, here it was, wearing a new face: that of a savior in public and a trafficker in the dark.
Two days later, posing as a volunteer journalist from a women’s welfare magazine, Rhea visited Prerna Shelter Home under a false name. The building looked cheerful from the outside—fresh paint, a manicured lawn, posters promoting female empowerment in Hindi and English. Inside, however, the corridors felt too quiet. Smiles from the staff didn’t reach their eyes. A receptionist led her to a room where Nizam Bhai awaited. He was in his late forties, dressed in a crisp kurta and Nehru jacket, with kind eyes behind rimless glasses and a voice so soothing it nearly disarmed her. “Ah, you’re the writer from Delhi,” he said warmly. “We’re honored.” He offered her chai, spoke of his vision for India’s daughters, and quoted Tagore and Amartya Sen within the same breath. But Rhea’s instincts screamed. His room was too perfectly curated—family photos on the desk, a Gita on the shelf, and a handmade painting of Mother Teresa on the wall. While he turned to take a call, she carefully angled her phone and clicked three silent photos of a folder lying open on the desk. The heading read: “February Transfer Batch – List Finalized.” No official government seals, no authorization stamps. The names were aliases, but the handwriting matched the notes she’d seen in the tunnel. One corner of the file had a scribbled code: KM 431 / D-TUN / 3. As Nizam turned back, Rhea smiled and asked, “Do you ever worry? That these girls will vanish again after leaving here?” Nizam chuckled, unblinking. “Oh no. We make sure they’re taken to exactly where they’re meant to be.” His eyes didn’t blink. In that moment, Rhea knew: this was the man who had turned Dharmapur into a hunting ground. She excused herself quickly, pretending to feel unwell, and slipped out the back gate—where she spotted a pile of rusted railway tools stacked beside an old trolley cart. She took another photo, her hands now trembling. She called Animesh from a burner phone as soon as she was safe. “He’s real,” she said. “And he’s not hiding. He’s hosting.”
Later that night, Rhea and Animesh met inside an abandoned grain warehouse near Ara, where Fazal joined them. Animesh laid out a physical map on the floor—new railway schedules, old loop lines, and markings overlaid in red ink. “Nizam Bhai doesn’t just operate Dharmapur. He’s running a corridor from Katihar to Mughalsarai, using decommissioned freight lines and unofficial shelters as holding pens,” Animesh explained. “The tunnel was just a midpoint.” Fazal added, “And get this: I found his name—his real one—buried in a charity trust from 1997. Nazim Ali, former railway engineer, posted in Bhagalpur. Suspended in 2002 after a freight accident. Went underground. Resurfaced four years later as a ‘social worker.’” Rhea’s jaw tightened. “How deep is he in the system?” Animesh answered grimly, “Deep enough to delay a national train every year without raising alarms. Deep enough to make people disappear without leaving a single digital trace.” Rhea opened her laptop. “Then we do what he doesn’t expect. We go loud.” Together, they began assembling a data dump—images, voice recordings, maps, tunnel blueprints, names of victims, dates, and footage from Prerna. Fazal connected it to an anonymous dark web leak channel used by whistleblowers. Within twelve hours, the story titled “Sixteen Minutes to Nowhere” began to go viral under encrypted platforms. But they knew it wouldn’t be enough. They had evidence—but not a confession. Not a face. “We bring him onto the train,” Rhea whispered. “And we trap him. At Dharmapur. One final time.” Animesh looked at her with something like pride. “You’re talking about baiting the hunter,” he said. “We’re not just baiting him,” Rhea replied. “We’re hijacking his ritual.” The trap was set. The next Guwahati–Delhi Express would carry more than just passengers. It would carry a reckoning.
7
Three nights later, under a waxing moon, Coach S4 of the Guwahati–Delhi Express rumbled to life again. This time, every breath, every glance, every footstep was deliberate. Rhea sat on Berth 37, dressed simply, her hair tied back, a weathered cloth bag beside her containing two phones, a hidden mic sewn into her kurti collar, and a GPS tag taped under the seat. Fazal was four coaches away, disguised as a traveling insurance agent, and Animesh sat in B2 again, this time with an earpiece connected to a secure comm-link, scanning police channels on a modified frequency. This wasn’t just a journey—it was a sting. With help from an insider RPF officer still loyal to Animesh from his CBI days, they had arranged for the train’s CCTV in the pantry and coach vestibules to stream directly to Fazal’s laptop. The plan was simple: provoke Nizam Bhai into reappearing by feeding him misinformation through a fake tip—a planted rumor of a girl smuggling evidence out of S4 on this very ride. “He won’t be able to resist inspecting it himself,” Animesh had said. “Predators always circle their own traps when they smell a leak.” As the train entered Katihar, Rhea noticed the same patterns begin to resurface. Berth changes without reason. An unfamiliar vendor walking through S4 handing out sealed bottles without asking. A quiet woman pretending to be asleep but watching everyone through half-lidded eyes. One of the techies from the previous journey was back—except this time, his bag bore a different railway sticker, one from the Northeast Freight Division. Details only those in the loop would miss. And then, just past Kumedpur, she saw him.
Nizam Bhai boarded at the outer edge of the platform, not through the main gate, but from a freight line crossover. He wore a plain white kurta-pajama, and walked as if he belonged—no glances, no hesitation, like a snake slipping into tall grass. He entered S4 from the rear vestibule and took a seat opposite Rhea without a word. His eyes met hers briefly, and he gave a nod. Calm. Measured. Dangerous. “You’re the girl with the pen, aren’t you?” he said softly. “The one trying to write stories about shadows.” Rhea steadied her voice. “Some shadows deserve the light.” Nizam smiled without warmth. “Only if the light knows what it’s illuminating.” With that, he leaned back, unfurled a blanket, and closed his eyes—as if to say game on. From her pocket, Rhea texted Fazal: “He’s in. Coach S4. Time to activate.” Fazal, sitting in Coach S8, opened a decoy chat line where a staged leak was being ‘uploaded’ to a dummy site—visible only through a tracker link tied to Nizam’s operatives. The bait was that Rhea had a hard drive hidden in her bag with original tunnel footage and personnel identities. Within twenty minutes, Nizam’s eyes opened again. He stood, pretending to adjust his shawl, and slowly walked toward the bathroom. Two men—previously seated in S3—followed seconds later. Rhea waited precisely three minutes before stepping out herself, whispering through the mic, “Movement confirmed. Approaching Dharmapur.” Animesh’s voice crackled softly through her earpiece. “Don’t let them isolate you. We move the moment the train halts.” But this time, Dharmapur wouldn’t be silent.
The train hissed to its usual ghostly halt at Signal Marker KM 431, but the fog was no longer its ally. Tonight, twelve plainclothes RPF officers—stationed along the route under the guise of ticket examiners and sweepers—spread through the train silently. Fazal was already rerouting the coach’s CCTV feeds to a local server. But Nizam’s men acted fast. One blocked the pantry corridor. Another tripped the coach lights. Rhea was grabbed just as she tried to text a code. A hand covered her mouth. She was dragged halfway into the vestibule between S3 and S4. “Where is the drive?” a voice hissed. “Where is the footage?” But before she could answer, the coach doors were smashed open from the outside. Animesh, cane in hand, stormed in with two officers, shouting, “Drop her or you’ll be answering to the CBI!” In the scuffle, one of the traffickers pulled a knife—but the train’s headlamps suddenly flared, blinding everyone momentarily. When their vision cleared, Nizam Bhai was gone. “He’s making for the tunnel!” Rhea shouted, pushing free. She ran alongside Animesh and Fazal, past the twisted signboard of Dharmapur, into the fields where the roots choked the earth, and toward the mouth of Tunnel 12-A. Inside, the darkness was absolute. But they followed the scent of oil, the hum of rubber wheels, and the glint of a lantern far ahead. Nizam ran like a man who knew every stone. But he hadn’t accounted for one thing: Madhav Bhardwaj had returned. The old signalman appeared from the shadows near the tunnel fork, holding a flare. “End of the line,” he said. “Tracks don’t forget.” Nizam paused, turned—and saw the red of the flare glowing like the end of an old sin. Before he could flee, RPF officers emerged from both ends. Nizam was cornered. “You think you’ve done something brave?” he spat at Rhea. “This will grow back. Men like me are the roots of your country. I am not the disease—I’m the soil.” Rhea stared at him, voice calm. “Maybe. But tonight, the soil answers for the graves it swallowed.” Behind her, the anklet she wore—Anaya’s anklet—clinked once, like the closing of a long-open chapter. In the silence that followed, Nizam Bhai was arrested. The sixteen minutes had expired—but this time, the shadows didn’t win.
8
Dawn broke slowly over the flat plains of eastern Bihar as the Guwahati–Delhi Express continued its journey, but the air inside Coach S4 felt different—lighter, almost sacred. For the first time in years, the train had passed Dharmapur without swallowing anyone into silence. Rhea sat by the window, her hands clasped around a lukewarm cup of tea given to her by a chaiwala who seemed unaware of what had unfolded just hours earlier. Across the aisle, Animesh scrawled notes into his old leather-bound diary, the same one he’d used during his final official case. His hand trembled less now. The burden of unfinished business had finally begun to lift. Behind them, two plainclothes RPF officers sat casually chatting with Fazal, who was uploading the final set of evidence from the sting: live footage, the arrest log, interviews with rescued girls, and a list of former government officials found linked to Nizam Bhai’s charitable trust. The data dump had gone viral overnight. News networks were already spinning headlines—“The Dharmapur Disappearances,” “The Train That Took People Without Returning Them,” “Exposing the Railway Trafficking Ring.” But the real weight of the story lay not in the sensation—but in the silence it had finally broken. Rhea looked out the window and thought of Anaya, her cousin, lost in the smog of forgotten files and shrugged shoulders. She wasn’t coming back. But now, maybe fewer girls would have to vanish before someone listened. For the first time, justice had outrun the train.
Later that day, a small gathering formed near the ruins of the Dharmapur station—now officially flagged for archaeological and criminal investigation. Among the crowd stood former railway workers, local villagers, RPF officials, and journalists. The Tunnel 12-A was now under tight lockdown, its hidden chambers and side corridors being photographed, measured, documented. Rescued girls were being brought to proper government facilities, with real IDs, counselors, and lawyers. Rhea stood at the edge of the clearing, eyes fixed on the arched mouth of the tunnel, now sealed with a red-and-white barricade and an official board: “Entry Restricted: Crime Scene Under Investigation.” Madhav Bhardwaj, the old signalman, shuffled beside her and offered her a faint smile. “The tunnel’s asleep now,” he said. “It won’t whisper anymore.” Rhea nodded but didn’t speak. Her mind replayed flashes of all she had witnessed: the ghostly figures moving crates at night, the silent disappearances, the red scarf left behind, the darkness that seemed to breathe. Behind her, Animesh approached quietly. “He’s not speaking,” he said. “Nizam Bhai. Silent since the arrest. But the files we seized in his office mention names we’ve never seen. Shelters across West Bengal, Jharkhand, even Chhattisgarh. This was just one line in a bigger network.” Rhea turned to him, her face calm but determined. “Then we trace the rest. Like railway maps. Every tunnel. Every station. Every name.” Animesh’s eyes lit up—not with joy, but with something more enduring: resolve. “You’ve grown into a fine detective,” he said softly. “Maybe I’ve just learned from one,” Rhea replied. “One who never gave up, even when the trail went cold.”
Three months later, the story of “Sixteen Minutes Late” was published as a full investigative series, serialized in print and digital form, titled “Tracks Remember: The Disappearance Files.” It won national awards, but more importantly, it prompted parliamentary questions, budget inquiries, and audits into over forty shelter homes and decommissioned railway sidings. A permanent task force on railway trafficking was formed. Some arrests were made quietly. Others led to protests. But the conversation had begun, and with it, a movement. Rhea continued working with Fazal and a new network of whistleblowers, while Animesh returned to Delhi, where he began mentoring young officers at the National Police Academy. The Guwahati–Delhi Express still ran, every day. But now, passengers watched the tracks a little more closely, noticed the names on reservation charts with greater care. Dharmapur was no longer a name erased from memory—it had become a warning etched into history. Rhea visited the site one last time, alone. She left a silver anklet, identical to Anaya’s, hanging on the rusted handle of the barricade outside Tunnel 12-A. The wind stirred, the grasses rustled, but there were no more whispers. Only the far-off sound of a train approaching, its horn slicing through the morning. And for the first time, Rhea didn’t flinch. She smiled. The train was on time. And no one would go missing today.
Sixteen minutes. That’s how long it used to take for someone to disappear, without noise, without witness, without a trace. A time too short to notice, yet long enough to destroy lives. But in the end, those sixteen minutes gave birth to something else—a reckoning. Months after the operation at Dharmapur, the stretch between Katihar and Mughalsarai was equipped with real-time surveillance, GPS-linked train logs, and human rights observers aboard all long-haul express routes crossing sensitive zones. A new law passed under the Ministry of Railways and Women & Child Development jointly, named “The Missing Window Act”, mandated investigation of all unexplained train halts exceeding 5 minutes in rural areas. Shelter homes across the eastern corridor were audited. Many were shut down. Survivors were given not just protection, but voices. Rhea’s report became part of a new national database that helped families reconnect with trafficked relatives across state lines. The system had cracked—but not from above. From within. Because two people decided not to look away when the train stopped.
Animesh Basu, once a forgotten name in dusty CBI archives, began lecturing on “Intuition and Pattern in Field Work”—not at conferences, but at police academies and journalism schools. He told the story often. Not to glorify the chase, but to remind his listeners that the truth doesn’t always scream—it sometimes hides in habit, in the lull of routine, in the same station where the tea is always lukewarm. Rhea Sharma, once an intern, now led The Vanishing Files Project, a volunteer-led initiative investigating cold cases of missing persons linked to transit routes. She still wore the silver anklet Anaya left behind, now dulled by time, but still firm around her wrist—where she had looped it as a reminder. She never entered another tunnel, never again rode S4 past Dharmapur. But every time a train passed through that corridor without an unexplained delay, she’d smile faintly and check the clock: on time.
And somewhere, in the overgrown fields behind that long-dead station, Tunnel 12-A remained sealed, vines thickening around its concrete throat, the echoes of its sins fading into soil. The wind still whistled through the tall grass, but no one whispered anymore. The ground had stopped feeding on fear. Because the train no longer swallowed its own. Because silence, finally, had run out of time.
End
