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In his right hand he clutched a creased plastic bag containing his wife’s death certificate, two photos of her dressed nicely—the pink outfit and the blue—and the government document about her disability that had secured her metal crutches, free of charge. These remainders of her presence stank of mildew and contained words he couldn’t read, but he wanted them in his hands as he gave the testimony he hoped would put the Husains in prison.

The judge looked at him kindly while swearing him in, but when the prosecutor cleared his throat, Abdul Shaikh’s knees buckled. He had to grab the stand to stay upright. He had never been in such a place, talking to such intimidating people. At the most basic questions of the prosecutor—a man he understood to be on his side—he grew flustered.

“Who do you live with?” the prosecutor asked.

His wife, he said, as if she were not dead. To the next question, he insisted he was thirty-five years old. He got his daughters’ names right, but his home address eluded him. He wasn’t sure where he was supposed to look when he answered. Should he look at the judge, who was considering him placidly from her perch high above the stand, or at the prosecutor, who stood opposite him, on his level? When he looked at the defense lawyer, he became still more confused, for the defender was grinning at the judge for no discernible reason.

He decided to look only at the judge. To her, he got out his account of finding Fatima at home and taking her to the hospital.

“Was your wife in a condition to speak to you that night?”

This was the first crucial question that Abdul Shaikh had to answer. He had to rally, and did. “Yes, she could speak,” he said forcefully. He appeared relieved that the words came out right.

“What did your wife tell you on the way to Cooper Hospital?”

“She told me they called her a prostitute and would take her other leg,” he began. This was what he’d told the police in his original statement, nine months earlier, but it did not sound awful enough in this courtroom—just ordinary Annawadi words. After a long pause, he continued. “She told me they beat her.” Another long pause, thinking. Then he said, “She told me that they held her by the neck and beat her with a big stone.”

There. The words of a dying woman that he hoped might turn around the case.

The prosecutor seemed delighted, and the Sahar policemen in attendance were happy, too. As the Husains’ mop-haired, pin-striped defender began the cross-examination, Abdul Shaikh’s composure continued to grow. No, his wife had not been depressed after their daughter Medina drowned in a pail. No, his wife hadn’t poured kerosene on herself twice before. By the time he staggered off the stand and collapsed into a white plastic chair, he believed he had avenged his children’s loss.

“Now what, what next?” said Judge Chauhan, by way of calling the final Annawadi witness to the stand.

Cynthia Ali, Fatima’s best friend, had resented the Husains ever since her husband’s garbage business went under. Late on the night of the burning, as Abdul hid in his storeroom, she’d stood in the maidan trying to convince her neighbors to march to the police station and demand the arrest of the whole Husain family.

Although Cynthia hadn’t seen the fight between Fatima and the Husains, the following day she had given the police a witness statement to the contrary. Then, through the brothelkeeper’s wife, she had informed the Husains that her testimony would send them to jail, unless they paid her twenty thousand rupees before she took the stand. The Husains, having refused to pay, had been bracing for her vengeance for months.

“I feel as if I am going crazy,” Zehrunisa had said to Abdul the previous day as they waited for scavengers at the scales. She had a wild look in her eyes that he hadn’t seen since she’d stood at the window of the Sahar Police Station’s unofficial cell. “After lying in court, what honor will she have?” Zehrunisa asked. “If you lose your honor, how can you show your face in Annawadi?”

Abdul found his mother