With the above objective in mind, I started trial runs of the boat to move around in the river for 2 to 3 hours occasionally as the rains set in June. Encouraged by the results in a week, I started working on a longer patrolling plan. I started mapping villages which lay either on the river or one of its streams to find out the viability of reaching them by boat. On one fine Saturday afternoon, I finally felt like implementing the plan to reach the end of the district river boundary and its diaras by boat.

Although I had visited most of the diaras on foot by then in Bagaha, I wanted to try the new way of reaching them through the river after alighting the motorboat which by then was tied to a newly constructed shed on the river banks just behind my residence. I wanted to complete the trip in 3 to 4 hours so as to return back by the night being confident that the headlights of the boat along with the spot lights would make it a comfortable ride back home.

As it was quite an adventurous plan being thought of and had not been tried earlier by the police, I called up Satishji to accompany me and he immediately agreed to join in the intended river journey. I asked my driver Pashupati Singh to prepare for the ride and got readied 4 armed and 2 unarmed men along for taking care of unforeseen situations on the way which would be passing through the hideouts of the dasyu gangs. After a lot of preparation, we finally started from Bagaha at about 4.30 pm with about 40 litres of fuel in the tank which consumed 20 litres per hour. About 20 litres extra fuel was taken in another container which was deemed as sufficient for the return journey since Ratwal was hardly 15 kilometres by the riverside we calculated.

To be continued....