Call: Barring

He spun around, shock bleeding into guilt. “Meera? What are you—”

The next evening, the same thing. No call. Rohan grew agitated—snapping at dinner, forgetting to pick up Kavya from her art class. On the third day, he left work early, drove to a run-down internet café in Electronic City, and made a call from a landline. Meera, who had taken a half-day “sick leave,” followed him in an auto-rickshaw. call barring

The police traced the syndicate through the internet café’s CCTV. Within a week, three men were arrested. Nikhil returned from Thailand, pale and apologetic, and checked himself into a rehabilitation center. Rohan’s phone remained on the family plan, call barring now permanently enabled—not to hide a lie, but to block unknown numbers and rebuild trust. He spun around, shock bleeding into guilt

“I was going to pay the final installment tonight,” he whispered. “Ten lakhs. After that, they promised to leave us alone. But when the calls stopped, I thought they’d gotten impatient. I thought they’d already…” No call

Meera’s anger curdled into ice. She pulled out her own phone. “We’re calling the police. Right now.”