On 24 May 1971, after receiving a purported telephone call from Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her secretary, P.N. Haksar, the chief cashier at the Parliament Street branch of the State Bank of India handed over Rs 60 lakh meant for secret operations in East Pakistan to the PM’s courier. When the chief cashier approached the PMO for a receipt, he was told that neither Haksar nor the PM had given any such instruction or sent anyone. He had been duped.

Within a few hours, Delhi Police managed to recover most of the cash and arrest the man responsible for the heist: former army captain Rustom Sohrab Nagarwala. Subsequent events—a botched police investigation, bungling by the lower judiciary and the mysterious deaths of the accused and the principal investigator—and Indira Gandhi’s inexplicable silence through it all launched several conspiracy theories. She would later clarify, ‘A section of the people were occupied in manufacturing this kind of propaganda day in and day out, and I did not pay much attention.’

This book, based on extensive research, police records, press reports, depositions before the Justice Jaganmohan Reddy Commission and its report, is the first authoritative work on the case, its investigation and its afterlife as ‘the scam that shook a nation’.