On October 23, 1990, a local journalist, Gonu Jha, rang the circuit house in Samastipur at around two in the morning, checking on L K Advani. He found out that the BJP leader was asleep and that his supporters had left. The second information was, of course, all that mattered—the very reason Gonu had made the call. Because he was neither a journalist nor Gonu; he was Lalu Prasad Yadav, then the chief minister of Bihar, determined to stop Advani’s Rath Yatra in a state devastated by recent communal riots. The phone call assured the cops that they wouldn’t have to tear through an army of protesters for their climactic move; the next morning, they arrested Advani.