In the following weeks, Dick began to receive anonymous, poison-pen letters. These were usually written using letters cut from the newspaper and stuck crudely onto a sheet of paper. They accused him of a variety of things, mainly of a sexual nature.

There were about a dozen such letters. At first Dick was amused, then angry, then worried. Of course he was innocent of the accusations but even a rumour could be damaging, both to him and to the company. He had asked Indian friends for advice. They told him to ignore the letters - the city was full of jealous madmen. Many of his friends too had received such letters in the past. They would stop sooner or later.

They did indeed stop a month or so later. But he continued to feel uneasy. There was someone out there who had a grudge against him, who wanted to harm him.

More worrying was the death threat he received. Someone telephoned the factory to say that he would be dead within a week. The call was anonymous. It had been repeated three times. Dick then received an anonymous letter containing the same message.

For some time he could not think straight. It felt like a bad dream. A British consular official in Bombay had been shot in his car a few weeks earlier. But Dick wondered why any terrorist organisation would want to kill him? When he reported the death threat to the police, they did not take it very seriously. They gave him a retired police officer as a bodyguard for a time and advised him to be careful! In fact, no-one tried to kill him. Things gradually returned to normal. But it was an unnerving experience.

In the meantime, Dick kept Vish under tight control. First of all, he made sure that Vish was kept out of any business connected with the Hosur factory construction project. Dick himself took direct charge of the project, and checked every detail of the contracts. He cancelled the contract with Naveen Construction and re-negotiated a new contract with a company Vish had no connections with. And now that he knew for certain that Vish was dishonest, Dick systematically checked on Vish's other activities. Perhaps Lennox might change his mind if there was sufficient evidence against Vish.