Only the dark-skinned folk commit all sorts of misdeeds. Meanwhile, the serestadar and the peskar, having taken extra bribes from the indigo planter, began to suppress the depositions of the opposing party and read out only those statements that favored their own side, gradually twisting and turning the needle as they pleased. At this juncture, the indigo planter began his speech: "I have come to this place and am doing all manner of good for the Bengalis—I am spending especially for their education and medicine—and yet, such accusations against me? Bengalis are terribly treacherous and quarrelsome." The magistrate, hearing all this, went off for his tiffin. After tiffin, having drunk copiously and smoked a cheroot, he returned to court. When the case was presented, the sahib, glancing at the papers as if they were a tiger, said to the serestadar, "Dismiss this case at once." At this order, the indigo planter's face puffed up in indignation, and he began to glare venomously at the naib. The naib, with downcast face, scratching his chin and shaking his belly, began to mutter, "It's become a burden to keep zamindari among Bengalis—the indigo planters' oppression has turned the land into a desert—the tenants are crying out in terror." The magistrates, at the request of their own kind, become subservient to them, and the way the law is twisted, there is always a sure escape route for the indigo planters. People say that the zamindar's tyranny is killing the tenants—that is a great mistake. The zamindars do oppress, true, but they do so while keeping the tenants alive, for the tenant is the zamindar’s eggplant field. The indigo planter is not like that—whether the tenant lives or dies matters little to him—as long as the cultivation of indigo increases, all is well—the tenant is merely the indigo planter’s true radish patch.

Thakchacha, in the Benigarden lock-up, reveals his own secrets in his sleep— Encounters with Banchharam and Batlay in the police station, The case is sent to the higher court, Thakchacha is imprisoned, His conversations with other prisoners in jail, And the theft of his food.

When fear and worry enter the mind, sleep does not come. Thakchacha grew exceedingly restless in the Benigarden lock-up, tossing and turning on a single blanket. He got up once or twice to check how much of the night remained. At the sound of a carriage or a human voice, he would think, "Perhaps it is dawn at last." Once or twice...

With a start, Bar sat up and asked the sepoys, “Brother! What time is it now?” Annoyed, they replied, “Arre, there are still two or three hours left before the cannon fires. Go back to sleep—why do you keep checking the time?” Hearing this, Thakchacha rolled about on his blanket. His mind was a whirlpool of thoughts—so many ideas, so many schemes, so many ways out. Sometimes he wondered, Why did I spend my whole life chasing after gambling and trickery? Where has all that money