Chapter 6: Suryansh

# Chapter 6: Suryansh

## The Forest

The sandalwood smuggling briefing at the SP's office in Wellington lasted forty minutes and left Suryansh with a file thicker than his thumb and a mandate that could be summarised as: find them, stop them, don't get killed, and don't embarrass the department.

Superintendent Meenakshi Iyer was a compact woman in her late forties who wore her authority the way other people wore uniforms — as something that had been earned, broken in, and made to fit. She had spent fifteen years in the Tamil Nadu Special Task Force before moving to district policing, and she spoke with the clipped precision of someone who had spent too many hours in operational briefings to waste words.

"The Nilgiris sandalwood belt runs from Masinagudi through Kotagiri to Upper Coonoor," she said, tapping a map pinned to the wall behind her desk. The map was covered in red dots — incident locations — clustered along the forest corridors like a rash. "In the last eighteen months, we've intercepted fourteen shipments. We've missed at least thirty. The smugglers operate in three- to four-person teams. They enter the forest at night, fell the trees with hand saws — no power tools, too noisy — and carry the wood out on foot. One tree yields sandalwood worth anywhere from ₹8 to ₹15 lakhs on the black market."

"Routes?"

"Multiple. They change constantly. The terrain is dense tropical forest above 1,000 metres — shola grasslands, ravines, seasonal streams. The smugglers are almost all local — Irula tribals, Kurumba tribals — people who grew up in these forests and can navigate them in the dark without torches."

"Are the tribals running the operations?"

"No." SP Iyer's jaw tightened. "The tribals are the labour. Paid ₹5,000 to ₹10,000 per job. The operators are based in Mysuru and Erode. Timber mafia. They have contacts in the Forest Department, in the transport sector, and — I suspect but cannot prove — in local government. The tribals take all the risk. The operators take all the money. Standard extraction economy."

Suryansh studied the map. The red dots formed a pattern — heavier along certain forest corridors, lighter in areas with better road access. The smugglers were avoiding the roads, which meant they were carrying logs weighing 40-60 kilograms through forest terrain for distances of 5-10 kilometres. That required physical fitness, local knowledge, and a network of drop points.

"What's the detection rate?"

"Pathetic." SP Iyer didn't sugarcoat. "We catch the carriers. Sometimes. We've never touched the operators. The carriers don't talk — they're more afraid of the mafia than they are of us, and honestly, I can't blame them. Two carriers who cooperated with the Forest Department last year were found beaten on the Ooty-Gudalur highway. One lost an eye. The message was received."

"And the K9 capability?"

"That's why you're here, Inspector. A trained tracking dog can follow a scent trail through the forest for kilometres. The smugglers can change their routes, but they can't change their smell. Your dog gives us an advantage we've never had."

Suryansh looked at the file. Inside were incident reports, witness statements, forest maps marked with known trails, and a list of suspected operators — names, photographs, known associates. One photograph caught his eye: a man in his fifties, heavy-set, wearing the white shirt and mundu of a respectable Kerala businessman. The name beneath was Mathew Kurien.

"Kurien runs a timber business in Erode," SP Iyer said, following his gaze. "Legal on paper. He holds Forest Department licences for teak and eucalyptus. We believe he uses the legal operation as a front for the sandalwood trade. But we have no evidence that would survive a courtroom."

"Surveillance?"

"Attempted twice. Both times, our officers were identified within forty-eight hours. Kurien has informants. We need a different approach." She looked at Suryansh with the evaluating gaze of a commanding officer assessing a new asset. "I need you in the forest, Inspector. Not behind a desk. Not running routine patrols. In the forest, tracking fresh cuts, following scent trails, building a map of their operational pattern. Can your dog do that?"

"Bahadur can track a forty-eight-hour-old scent trail through wet terrain. In dry conditions, longer. He can differentiate between sandalwood, teak, and rosewood from a distance of fifty metres. He's the best tracking dog I've worked with, and I've worked with eleven."

SP Iyer allowed herself the ghost of a smile. "Good. Start with the Kotagiri corridor — we've had two incidents there in the last month. The Forest Range Officer will coordinate with you. His name is Murugan. He's competent, which in my experience is not a word I use often about Forest Department personnel."

---

The Kotagiri forest was thirty minutes from Coonoor by a road that had been paved in the optimistic era of five-year plans and had not been re-paved since. Suryansh drove the department Bolero — a vehicle that treated potholes as personal challenges — with Bahadur in the back seat, his head out the window, ears streaming in the wind, cataloguing the smells of the forest with the professional intensity of an analyst processing data.

Forest Range Officer Murugan met them at the checkpoint — a concrete shed with a bamboo barrier and a handwritten sign that read "NILGIRIS FOREST DIVISION — KOTAGIRI RANGE — TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED (AND POSSIBLY EATEN BY WILD ELEPHANTS)." The parenthetical had been added in different handwriting, suggesting it was either a joke or a genuine warning. In the Nilgiris, both were equally plausible.

Murugan was in his thirties, Madurai-born, with the lean build of a man who walked forest trails daily and the sunburn of someone who had stopped bothering with sunscreen around 2019. He carried a lathi, a walkie-talkie, and a thermos of coffee that he offered to Suryansh before any other greeting. This, Suryansh was learning, was the Nilgiris protocol — coffee first, conversation after.

"The last incident was twelve days ago," Murugan said, leading them down a narrow trail that disappeared into forest so dense the sunlight arrived in fragments. "Two sandalwood trees, both mature — forty to fifty years old. Clean cuts. Hand saws. The trees were felled between 2 and 4 AM, based on the sap oxidation. By the time my patrol reached the site at 6 AM, the logs were gone. We found drag marks leading north toward the Kotagiri-Mettupalayam road."

The forest closed around them. Suryansh's boots sank into leaf litter that was centuries deep — layers of decomposed leaves, bark, fallen flowers, the organic sediment of a living system that had been recycling itself since before human memory. The air was thick and wet, saturated with the smell of green growth and the fainter, sweeter notes of the forest's chemistry — resins, fungi, the almond-like scent of decomposing wood.

He unclipped Bahadur's lead. The dog's posture changed immediately — from companion to professional. His nose dropped to the ground, his body lowered, and he began to move in the systematic search pattern that his training had ingrained: quartering the area, covering ground in overlapping sweeps, processing scent data at a rate that human technology couldn't match.

"He's looking for sandalwood?" Murugan asked, watching.

"He's looking for everything. But I've given him the sandalwood command — he'll alert on fresh sandalwood cuts, sap, sawdust, and the specific scent compounds that sandalwood releases when it's injured." Suryansh watched Bahadur work. There was a beauty in it — the economy of movement, the focused intelligence, the partnership between handler and dog that operated on a frequency below language. "Once he finds a trail, he can follow it."

They walked for forty minutes. The trail narrowed, widened, crossed a stream that ran clear and cold over polished stones, and entered a section of forest that Murugan identified as the "high-value zone" — a cluster of mature sandalwood trees that the Forest Department had tagged and monitored.

Bahadur stopped.

His body went rigid — front paw raised, tail horizontal, nose pointed at a spot approximately three metres to the left of the trail. The alert posture. Suryansh had seen it hundreds of times, and it still raised the hair on his arms.

"He's got something."

They moved to the spot. It took Suryansh a moment to see it — the stump was hidden by ferns, but the cut was unmistakable. Clean, angled, the pale inner wood already darkening with exposure to air. Fresh. Not twelve days old. Maybe three.

"This isn't in my reports," Murugan said, his face hardening. "This is a new cut."

Bahadur was already moving, nose to the ground, following a scent trail that led away from the stump toward the northeast. Suryansh followed, marking the GPS coordinates on his phone. Behind him, Murugan was on his walkie-talkie, calling in the discovery.

The trail led through half a kilometre of dense underbrush before emerging at a clearing where the forest floor was disturbed — flattened grass, scuff marks, the impression of a heavy object dragged across soft earth. A staging point. The smugglers had cut the tree, dragged the log here, and transferred it to — what? A vehicle couldn't reach this spot. A mule, perhaps. Or human carriers.

Bahadur circled the clearing, nose working, and then sat. The final alert. The scent trail ended here — which meant the sandalwood had been wrapped or containerised at this point, sealing the scent. The smugglers knew about dogs. They had adapted.

"Smart," Suryansh murmured.

"Too smart," Murugan agreed. "They're getting better."

Suryansh looked at the clearing, at the disturbed earth, at the forest pressing in from all sides. Somewhere in these hills, someone was running an operation with military precision — reconnaissance, timing, logistics, counter-detection. This was not petty theft. This was organised crime operating in a landscape that most police officers couldn't navigate.

He looked down at Bahadur. The dog looked back, steady and patient, ready for the next command.

"We'll need to be out here at night," Suryansh said. "Can you arrange patrol schedules?"

Murugan nodded. "Night patrols are — difficult. The terrain is dangerous after dark. Leopards, elephants, gaur. The forest doesn't belong to us at night."

"It doesn't belong to the smugglers either. But they're acting like it does." Suryansh took one last look at the clearing, memorising the terrain. "We'll start with observation points. Three nights a week. Bahadur and I will take the forest. Your team covers the road exits."

Murugan extended his hand. Suryansh shook it — a firm, dry grip that communicated more than words. An alliance formed in a forest clearing, between a cop from Rajasthan and a ranger from Madurai, bonded by a shared enemy and a shared landscape.

They walked back to the checkpoint as the afternoon mist began to roll in, erasing the forest behind them layer by layer. By the time they reached the road, the trees had vanished. Coonoor existed in cloud, and the cloud revealed nothing.

The drive back was quiet. Bahadur slept in the back seat with the easy exhaustion of a dog who had done meaningful work. Suryansh drove with one hand on the wheel and the other on his phone, dictating notes into a voice memo:

New cut, unreported, coordinates 11.4237 N 76.7891 E. Staging point 500m NE. Scent trail terminated — containerisation. Operators adapting to K9 presence before K9 is even operational. Informant network active. Recommend night observation, minimum three sessions per week. Discuss with SP Iyer.

He parked at the station, woke Bahadur, and walked to his quarters. The sun was setting behind the ridge, painting the sky in shades of orange and violet that belonged in a painting but somehow existed, casually, every evening in this impossible town.

From the house next door, he could hear music — someone playing what sounded like old Tamil film songs on a Bluetooth speaker, slightly too loud, accompanied by the arrhythmic percussion of cooking.

His neighbour. Swathi. The festival coordinator with the exploding pressure cooker and the expressive eyes.

He went inside, fed Bahadur, heated leftover dal on the single-burner stove, and ate standing at the kitchen counter because he had not yet bought a dining table. The dal was acceptable. His mother would have called it a war crime.

Somewhere in the forest, someone was felling sandalwood trees worth lakhs. Somewhere in the town, a festival was being built. And somewhere in the house next door, a woman was cooking dinner and playing A.R. Rahman too loudly.

Suryansh finished his meal, washed his plate, and sat on the verandah with Bahadur. The stars were appearing, one by one, in a sky unmarred by city light.

He did not think about Nandini. He did not think about Jaipur.

He thought about scent trails, and staging points, and the particular way that a mountain town could swallow secrets whole.