Abdullah is killed by police

Abdullah is killed by police after being misidentified as Sapna, turning a mistaken identity into a fatal encounter and exposing how little Lin knew about his friend’s past. The event reaches the reader through hurried warnings and secondhand accounts before Abdel Khader Khan later confirms that Abdullah was not Sapna at all. The gap between what the police believe and what Khader reveals makes the killing both a death and a belated disclosure about the forces arrayed against Abdullah.

The warning and the mistaken identity

The first account comes to Lin as an urgent warning: Abdullah Taheri is on a police hit list. A crime staffer at The Times has reportedly heard that officers have been ordered to take him alive if possible, but not to risk their own safety. If Abdullah hesitates during an attempt to arrest him, they are authorized to shoot. The warning is not simply that police are searching for him; it is that the terms of the search make a fatal outcome likely.

The stated reason is a police belief that Abdullah is Sapna. The person bringing the warning says the police have received a tip backed by what they regard as solid evidence, and that they intend to act that day. Lin initially cannot reconcile the identification with what he knows of Abdullah. Yet the possibility also seems to fit, leaving him aware that the account is missing essential pieces. The scene establishes the central uncertainty before revealing its answer: the police are acting with confidence, but that confidence is founded on a claim Lin cannot yet verify.

The ambush near Crawford Market

Didier Levy gives Lin a secondhand account of the killing, attributed to police officers who spoke about it to Mehmet, one of the owners of the establishment where Didier is. Some Colaba Police Station officers reportedly took part in the ambush. They surrounded Abdullah in a small street near Crawford Market and called on him to surrender. According to the officers’ account, Abdullah stood still before drawing two guns from his jacket and firing. The police returned fire, and Abdullah was killed.

The sequence is presented through what the officers told Mehmet, then what Didier recounts to Lin. It is therefore not an independently witnessed description of the confrontation. That chain of reporting matters: the same police who had identified Abdullah as Sapna are also the source for the account of how the encounter unfolded. The story records their version without resolving every detail of the encounter at that moment.

Didier’s manner underscores the impact of what he is recounting. Lisa Carter begins to cry beside him, and he puts an arm around her, rocking and patting her shoulder without looking at her. His actions appear automatic amid grief and shock. The report is not treated as distant news: it reaches people who know Abdullah and immediately alters the room around Lin.

The crowd and the body

After the shooting, a large crowd gathers and reacts angrily. The police try to take Abdullah’s body to a hospital in a van, but people in the crowd attack the vehicle and force it off the road. The police then take the body to the Crawford Market police station, with the crowd following and shouting abuse. The account leaves the crowd there, still gathered around the station.

This public reaction extends the consequences of the killing beyond the confrontation itself. The police cannot move Abdullah’s body as planned, and the crowd’s presence follows it from the attempted transport to the station. Didier’s report thus links the police action to a broader scene of public anger, while stopping short of explaining each person’s reasons for joining the crowd. What is clear is that Abdullah’s death does not remain a private loss or a quiet administrative matter.

The later revelation

When Lin later asks Abdel Khader Khan directly whether Abdullah was Sapna, Khader answers no and gives Lin his word that the identification was false. He says Abdullah’s enemies made the police believe it. When Lin asks who those enemies were, Khader identifies men from Iran, enemies from Abdullah’s own country. This later disclosure reverses the apparent certainty of the earlier police account: the label that helped make Abdullah a target was, according to Khader, deliberately planted by people hostile to him.

Lin recalls that he and Abdullah had fought with a group of Iranian men in an earlier street encounter. He had never asked Abdullah who they were or why the fight began, and the memory sharpens his regret. The killing therefore exposes not only a deception by Abdullah’s enemies but also a limit in Lin’s knowledge of his friend. He had been close enough to recognize Abdullah as a trusted companion, yet had left unanswered questions about the conflict that would later help explain the danger surrounding him.

The event’s meaning changes as the account develops. First it is a warning that the police may kill a wanted man; then it is Didier’s report of the ambush and the crowd’s response; finally, Khader’s explanation identifies Abdullah as the victim of a false accusation shaped by personal enmity. The delayed correction cannot undo the death, but it changes what the killing signifies: Abdullah was not revealed to be Sapna. Rather, the police acted on a mistaken identity that his enemies had successfully imposed.