A week ago, he was the ideal backroom boy, quiet and unassuming, in a party known to favour and reward such loyalists. On Saturday, as unconfirmed reports of two FIRs by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Punjab against Sandeep Pathak swept across the state, to Delhi, it was clear that the 46-year-old was unlikely to escape the limelight anytime soon. It was also read as a sign by rivals of how deeply his defection had stung Arvind Kejriwal. As it turns out, the sting is as fresh as it gets. The evening before seven AAP Rajya Sabha MPs, including Pathak, announced they were leaving the party and merging with the BJP, Kejriwal had been huddled with Pathak, conferring how to quash a rebellion that the party had heard was brewing. That meeting, to many, provided as clear – or as ambiguous – a picture of Pathak’s role in the AAP as any: a seemingly apolitical man, an IITian like Kejriwal, who had risen quickly to the top, to the rare privilege in the AAP of having the supremo’s ear.…