Death of a Moneylender

Falak a young journalist from Delhi is assigned to a remote village in south-central India where a moneylender is found dead hung from a lamppost in front of his house by an entire village united against injustice.Falak coldly hunts the story for a page one byline unconcerned with corrective conscience an attitude that cost him his relationship with Vani a rival newspaper journalist. Within hours of reaching the village his story is ready a villainous moneylender killed by long-suffering villagers.But Falak has also unearths a disconcerting fact that the moneylender was a kind-hearted generous man whose death was being used to intimidate other moneylenders. Outstanding loans are written off to buy peace with villagers but the politically well-connected and dangerous moneylenders plan a brutal retribution. About the Author Kota Neelima has been a journalist for seventeen years and has worked with the Indian Express Mint and the Sunday Guardian among other publications. She has written two novels Riverstones (2007) and Death of a Moneylender (2009).