HOW DO YOU DEFEND A BOY WHO CONFESSED TO KILLING SOMETHING THAT DOESN’T EXIST?
Sharp and stylish Delhi litigator Malti Jakhar is ten years into practice and a few bruising months away from quitting the city, the courts and the career she built from scratch. Then an impossible brief lands on her desk: Defend Gola Pitthan, a young tribal boy who has confessed to murdering a djinn.
As Malti digs through police paperwork and courtroom gossip, the case drags her far from Delhi and deep into a forested world where superstition, land and politics feed off one another – and where justice depends less on facts and more on how the crime is narrated and by whom.
The more she pulls at the threads, the clearer it becomes that the ‘djinn’ was meant to remain a mystery – just like the trial was rigged to fail ...