Number of words: 7739
LIKE
YOU AND ME
“To Shokie he is always
the man.”
Constable Antony chuckled
as he read aloud the opening line of a newspaper column.
“My dear Watson, you
are begging to be neutered,” Sub-Inspector Shajeeb said, grinning.
This exchange happened in
office around nine in the morning when their boss Shokie was summoned to the police
headquarters.
The newspaper report
was on the most recent confrontation between Shokie and the criminal lawyer
Karate Shekhar. (Karate is pronounced as Ka-rey-tuh, after the
place and not the martial arts form. Shekhar added that to his name to poke at
people flaunting family property or caste in surname, even though he knew it would
have little effect on those idiots.)
Shokie and her team had
built a strong case implicating local bigwigs, including actors and political
leaders, in the sexual abuse and murder of thirteen-year-old twin sisters at Kadalil.
The government then transferred the case to the Crime Branch. From then to the
inept handling by the prosecution, the case went downhill. Shekhar did not even
have to use his full repertoire of skills to get the accused acquitted.
The case, like all
their earlier encounters, had received the unwavering attention of the local media
and the public. The media made a big deal of the contest between Shokie and
Shekhar, and their head-to-head record which was roughly even.
The media was doubly-blessed
during the trial. They got hold of a recording (of a private conversation
between friends) in which Shekhar’s wife talks about her husband’s admiration
towards Shokie. As icing on that cake, she ends that diatribe with, “I hate
that bitch.”
A hack more literate
than his peers thought of sensationalizing the relationship by alluding to the
Sherlock Holmes story ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’; and hence, the opening
line of that column.
As for the two in the
alleged relationship, their actual contribution is minimal. Appearance-wise,
her dark features and even darker mood and humour contrasts with his pleasant
countenance and reputation to be quite a joker. If they have anything in
common, it is a strange detachment to their profession, a precarious balance of
the romantic and the pragmatic.
Shokie pursues
criminals with ingenuity and dogged persistence. She also understands the
system well enough to know that the worst usually escape incarceration and
punishment. (She accepts that with excessive sangfroid, the afore-mentioned colleagues
thought. They also wondered if the sangfroid was that of one who has no concern
for loss; or, that of one who has lost all.) She knew of Shekhar and of what he
does to her cases; other than that, her criminals got more of her time and
consideration than him.
Shekhar is also passionate
about his work but no one knows what drives that passion. His clients can trust
him to use everything, the law and the loopholes (adjournments, bribes,
cooked-up or misplaced evidence, whatever). But, how or why he picks a case
remains unknown. He has been a mercenary after big buck from slimy villains and
also, a charitable do-gooder using the big buck for pro bono cases. He was also
never short of excuses when he refused to take a case. There was no underlying
pattern of lofty moral or principle. Even the cases involving Shokie were
subject to his random selection. Some
think he flips a coin. In his professional capacity, Shekhar is flamboyant and
volatile. For that he compensates in the personal sphere by being staid. Even
the media thought so, at least till his wife’s outburst. When they hounded him
with regard to her revelations, his one-line statement surprised them, “Yes, I
do admire Circle Inspector Shokie.”
As for Shokie, no one
thought it wise to get her opinion on that issue.
Shokie returned to the
police station around ten. She glared at the newspaper on Antony’s table. He
quickly slipped it beneath some files before standing to attention. She looked
at Shajeeb and brusquely gestured that she wanted them in her office.
They stood in front of
her, unsure of her dark mood. She told them to sit down.
“Someone’s out to kill
Shekhar’s wife,” she said.
The men sat forward,
ramrod straight, poker-faced.
“It could be me,” she
matched their dead-pan expression.
The men relaxed a
little.
She briefed them about
her meeting at HQ. Shekhar too had been there.
Shekhar and his wife
had received printed notes, three in the last four days, left at their doorstep,
with the succinct threat, “It’s your wife’s turn.”
Shokie gave Antony an
evidence bag with the notes, and added that she did not expect to glean much
from that.
“I will be her sole
bodyguard. You two will assist with the investigation,” she said.
“When did we become a
security firm?” Antony protested.
Shajeeb glared at his
subordinate but he too raised a doubt, “Has Shekhar pulled strings?”
Shokie leaned back.
“I too thought so,” she
said. “I refused to take the case at first. Shekhar then clarified that it’s
his wife who wants me to take the case.”
“Aha…I think she’s
going to stage something to make you…” Antony was interrupted by Shajeeb’s
elbow jab at his ribs.
Shokie ignored the
remark, her dark eyes focused elsewhere.
“I think she knows
something really bad is going to happen.”
xxx
Shokie left for
Shekhar’s house soon after. It was in a middle-class locality, not posh in any way;
at the end of a long-winding lane, by the edge of a cliff. The house-name is ‘Land’s
End’. The house is a compact modern construction on half an acre. Shekhar
was outside in a lush garden. He tried a sentence or two about his garden but
Shokie’s disinterest cut him short. They went inside to meet his wife. She was
waiting in the living room and stood up when they walked in.
Shekhar excused himself
promising to be available later.
“Hi, I am Sunitha,” the
wife said.
“Shirley,” Shokie
replied.
“I thank you.”
Shokie studied the
lady. About her age and height, the same complexion, the same medium short hair,
left loose though and not tied back tightly like Shokie’s. Her face and figure
were fuller and softer. The eyes behind the round spectacles and lips seemed to
be used to smiles. She wore glass bangles on both hands.
Both ladies seemed to
be sure of themselves, with quiet intelligence.
“Let’s go to my
office,” Sunitha said. “Oh, I am sorry…shall I get you something to drink…not
even water…no?”
The living room, the
dining-cum-kitchen and the area to the right of the house with bedrooms and Shekhar’s
office had a comforting décor. That, like the garden, must be Shekhar’s
handiwork, Shokie thought. The magnificent view from the cliff-top was to the
right too.
Shokie followed Sunitha
to the smaller spartan area on the left. Shokie was reminded of a department in
a research institute where she had investigated a murder case.
There was a humming
from within the first room.
“I have my pet in
there,” Sunitha said, “a parallel computer I put together sometime around the
turn of the century…still functions.”
That and the next room,
her office, were air-conditioned and sound-proof. Access required a password to
be entered on a pad by the door.
At one end of the
rectangular office, away from the door, an old wooden recliner faced a
medium-size screen on the wall. There were floor-to-ceiling shelves on two
sides with neatly packed books and discs. At the other end, near the door, there
was a no-frills office table with a silent workstation on top and sturdy leather-backed
wooden chairs on either side.
“I thought you were a…”
Shokie said sitting down.
“No, I am not…” Sunitha
completed with a smile. “Shirley…that recording…that was a prank with friends.”
Shokie gave her best
I-have-no-idea-what-you-are-talking-about look.
“Ah…good,” Sunitha
said.
Sunitha leaned forward
with her arms on the table, her body rigid, her eyes fixed on the police
officer. Shokie recognized the posture, that of a person agitated within but
trying hard not to reveal that to anyone. Shokie wanted her to relax a little.
“What do you do?”
Shokie asked.
“I am a freelance
consultant these days. I help old friends in various industries. Finance
algorithms at times, a bit of data-mining, some projects which need
number-crunching. I retired early from the rat race.”
“Made enough early?”
“Actually, no…not
ransom material…” Sunitha laughed nervously, “too much ideals, too little
patience.”
“How did you and
Shekhar hook up?”
“A mistake…sorry…my
mind’s elsewhere…how did we hook up…well, at a party in London. He was
holidaying there. I was thinking of leaving an investment bank. He was funny. I
needed a laugh.”
“No kids…?”
“Men in his family have
some problem…he confided that before proposing…” she laughed again, “oops…I am
giving you too much info…”
“Can you think of
anyone who would want to harm you?” Shokie asked.
“No,” the instant
reply.
The two ladies stared
at each other, silently acknowledging the first lie.
They were interrupted by
a buzz on Sunitha’s table. She checked a screen on the table. Shekhar was outside
her office carrying a tray with coffee and cookies. She released the lock on
the door.
Shekhar entered and
placed the tray on the office table.
“Thank you, Shakes,”
Sunitha stood up to help her husband serve. “I had asked the Inspector if she
wanted anything.”
“Everything ok?”
Shekhar asked before leaving.
“Is this like a panic
room?” Shokie asked, sipping the freshly brewed coffee.
“Come to think of it…it
could be…” Sunitha said, “the doors are not the armoured kind, though. But, if
you try to enter without the password at the door, say by blowing up the door,
my workstation here and the pet next door will reset themselves to factory
settings.”
“Is the ventilation ok if
the a/c is off?”
“Yes, that’s actually
the only smart thing about this room…”
“I didn’t get that…”
“There’s no other
connection to the outside world.”
“Not even through this
computer?”
“No, that’s linked to
the next room and not further.”
“No internet…?”
“I left my smartphone
and laptop in the living room.”
“Good to meet one more
person paranoid about this smart world,” Shokie said.
Sunitha smiled.
“If there’s any
danger…” Shokie paused.
“Yes, I will try to
reach this room,” Sunitha said. “Once again, I thank you, Shirley.”
Shokie was not too sure
if the gratitude would last till the end.
“Just one more doubt,”
Shokie said, “what if you are inside immobilized and we want to rescue you.”
“Oh god…never thought
of that…” that too was an obvious lie, “I guess I will somehow send SOS to
Shokie with triple x at the end of the message.”
“With numerals and
special characters, I presume…”
“Of course.”
They smiled at each
other.
“One more doubt
actually…” Shokie said.
Sunitha tilted her
head.
“Why did you choose
me?” Shokie asked.
“Your name adds up to
13,” Sunitha replied with a kind laugh.
Shokie knew that the
other would laugh even more if she actually checked numerology or whatever whether
her name, whichever, added up to thirteen.
xxx
The situation remained
the same for ten days. No more threatening notes were delivered. Shokie could not
remember another case where she was so concerned about an impending danger. She
was a constant presence at ‘Land’s End’. She took extensive photos of
the outside and the inside.
Shokie found one room
in particular very intriguing. In addition to the stunning view from that room,
it was a photo gallery. Sunitha called it, “Our world…the great urban rural
divide.”
On two facing walls
were photos of the places Sunitha had been to, the landscape of skyscrapers and
modern architecture, the poverty on the streets of rich cities. On the other
two walls were photos of places in the State, the destroyed rivers, the
receding foliage, the quarries, the crumbling natural beauty. One photo in that
collection caught Shokie’s eye. An old house, a dark corridor within, sunlight creeping
in reluctantly through wooden window slats, and on the ground, there was a
small footprint imprinted on the dark red floor.
“That’s Shekhar’s
maternal house, near Karate. It’s his now. We go there often; no one
stays there,” Sunitha said. “That’s his grandmother’s sister’s footprint. Do
you know that’s considered to be a bad omen, footprint on newly laid floor
during construction? She died very young.”
“Is that still there?”
Shokie asked.
“The footprint…? Yes.”
Shokie visited that
empty house near Karate early the next day, without informing her team
or the couple. It was an hour’s drive from the city. She inspected it and the
layout. It is in the middle of a large rubber plantation. The nearest
neighbours are separated by a hill and paddy fields. It could be a great
hideout, to hide and to be hidden, she thought.
She interacted almost
exclusively with Sunitha in those days. They talked a lot and as in their first
meeting, there were lots of details, some admissions, a lie or evasion in
between. It increasingly resembled a close confiding conversation between
friends even though it was one way. Shekhar remained in the background,
concerned unintrusive helpful. In his presence, Sunitha referred to Shokie as
Inspector, not Shirley.
Meanwhile, Shajeeb and
Antony went through Shekhar’s old and new cases.
“I don’t think it will
lead to anything,” Shokie said, “but let’s not leave that stone unturned. Check
if there are clients who might have reason to hold a grudge.”
“Doesn’t he give his
best to all his slimy clients?” Antony said.
“There have been a few
he screwed,” Shajeeb said.
“Really…?” Antony said.
“A pity he feeds off criminals…”
“So do we,” Shajeeb
said.
“Don’t forget the cases
where he is a special public prosecutor,” Shokie said. “Maybe, someone’s trying
to influence him…”
“I have made a list of
those,” Shajeeb paused, “Ma’am…how about your existing cases…a long shot, I
know…?”
“What can the villains
in her cases hope to achieve?” Antony asked.
His senior officers did
not reply. Shokie indicated with a nod that they should look through those
cases too.
“What have we got from
the CCTV’s around their area?” Shokie asked.
“There’s no better
blind spot in the city than there at Land’s End,” Shajeeb replied.
While those
investigations continued, Shokie monitored the activities of the couple. She
remained in the background when the couple were together. Shokie went along, as
driver and bodyguard, when Sunitha ventured out without her husband. Shokie did
not raise any objections or restrictions till the tenth day.
“Do you really have to
go to that school?” Shokie asked.
“Yes, I have to,”
Sunitha replied, “it’s become an annual fixture. The girls will be so disappointed
if I don’t turn up for their Cultural & Science Fair.”
“Can’t you do it by
videoconference?”
“No.”
“Sunitha…”
“Shirley, you should
see those kids, their passion every year. These are not some rich kids with
opportunity banging on their door every day. I go there often, that should do,
I know…but, the girls somehow bring out their best during the annual fair…all
year, they wait for it.”
Shokie did not object
further.
The school is
twenty-five kilometres from the city. There was no way to make the route secure
for anyone other than a VVIP with category Z protection.
They prepared to leave
for the school around half past nine, when it was peak time for office traffic.
“What the…” Shekhar
exclaimed when the two ladies came out dressed for the occasion. Shokie’s
colleagues were pleasantly surprised too.
Sunitha and Shokie had
exchanged their usual mode of dress. Shokie wore an elegant cotton salwar, her
hair in a soft ruffled state, even sporting a smile. Sunitha was in jeans and rough
cotton shirt, hair pulled back tightly, hardly amused. Both wore dark glasses. The
glass bangles remained on the hands of the rightful owner.
Sunitha took the
driver’s seat in Shokie’s SUV and Shokie sat in the backseat supposedly working
on a laptop. From far, they could easily be mistaken. Shajeeb and Antony went
in separate vehicles, keeping some distance, one ahead the other behind,
attentive and surveying for trouble.
Traffic was slow the
first fifteen kilometres on the highway out of the city. After that stretch, Shokie
told Shajeeb and Antony to be extra alert. The highway was not dual carriage
from then on. There were many junctions, side roads and fewer people.
The attack came at one
junction. A pickup truck, from a side road on the left, rammed into Shokie’s side
of the SUV, throwing her across the seat. The SUV did not overturn but it went
sliding to the right side of the road. In front, Sunitha got caught between
seat and airbag. Shokie reached over to Sunitha, almost by reflex, held her
hand, a few bloodied bangles came loose.
Two men stepped out of
a parked car in the side road on the right. They were joined by the driver of
the pickup truck. They wore balaclava. One of them took out a gun and shot.
Sunitha hardly heard her own scream, deafened by the shot that smashed the pane
on her side and the airbag. The men unlocked the door, released her safety
belt. Two men grabbed her. The third kept the gun pointed at the prone figure
of Shokie. They were gone in less than forty seconds. Shajeeb and Antony, their
vehicles blocked by others, reached the SUV just as the car with Sunitha and
her abductors raced away from the scene.
xxx
Shokie was admitted in
hospital, unconscious having suffered concussion and also with a sprained hand and
a more than bruised ribcage.
She had already planned
for such an event. The search teams led by her subordinates found the
abductors’ car in half an hour, abandoned within a rubber plantation. It was a
stolen car with no leads. There were multiple tracks of vehicles from there and
no reliable witnesses. The abductors must have split up. The police studied all
CCTVs on routes to and from there. There were too many blind spots, uncharted
paths through countryside and stretches without camera. The abductors had disappeared
with Sunitha.
An abduction in broad
daylight has its advantages. Everyone saw everything and nothing. Cars could
speed through villages and no one would blink. The abductors had known the
position of Shokie and Sunitha in the SUV. Apart from the police and the couple,
the abductors could have got that information only if they had been closely
monitoring the SUV during the trip. Or, if they had a camera with live feed on
the SUV. That turned out to be the case. The police found a small camera wedged
in the back window. Who could have placed that camera in Shokie’s SUV and when?
They tried to trace the camera and its feed but that led nowhere.
That night, Antony
offered to look after Shokie in hospital.
Shokie sipped gruel
around eight. Around nine, a nurse checked her vitals and tried to make her
take painkillers. The nurse told Antony to call her at any time during the
night if there was any need. He copied his boss’s indifferent glare. She
offered to check later. Shokie told her not to disturb till early morning. The
nurse and her sweet smile vanished.
Antony had brought a bag
with the change of clothes Shokie kept in office. He also had the torn salwar
Shokie wore earlier, and the handbag she had had with her.
Shokie got up,
stretched and groaned. She searched the handbag. She vaguely remembered
slipping something into that before losing consciousness. She found the pieces
of bloody glass bangles, next to her gun. She kept staring at that for a while.
Antony thought he saw her shoulders shake with emotion.
She stepped out of the
hospital wear and dressed in her clothes. Antony stared out of the window. She
asked him to describe the layout of the hospital. She told him to take his car
from the parking area within the hospital and park it outside on the road.
“Where are you going?”
he asked. “Shouldn’t you rest?”
Around eleven, she
opened the window and stepped out onto the ledge. From the darkened room,
Antony watched the silhouette clamber down three floors. Shokie returned around
two, back in the room through the window. She stepped out of her clothes and
got onto bed in her underwear, tired and dead to the world within seconds.
Antony adjusted the blanket around her, tidied and folded her clothes, wondered
what she had been up to and where. He also knew that Shokie did not want him to
share the night’s events with anyone, not even with Shajeeb.
xxx
Shokie checked out of
the hospital at six. She dragged the groggy Antony to their office where
Shajeeb was waiting. Shajeeb had been coordinating the search and tech teams.
They had drawn a blank. There was not even a mobile call to trace from the area
around the abduction or from there to Land’s End.
“Shekhar is our only
suspect,” Shajeeb stated the obvious.
“I hope he is not the
one,” Shokie said. Her subordinates were surprised and hoped the newspaper
report was not right. She continued, “If he is, we are not going to find
anything. He knows the system as well as us.”
They scoured all
available material including feed from CCTV cameras near Shekhar’s home and
office, and around the city, tracing Shekhar’s movements and contacts.
“What about tapping his
phones and searching their other properties?” Shajeeb asked.
“Not now, we don’t want
to get into a legal tangle,” Shokie said. “He must be expecting it, though.”
Shokie asked the tech
team to find a way to enter Sunitha’s office. She could not think of a reason
to do so but it had to be done. Later that day, the tech team reported that
there were only two ways to enter Sunitha’s office: by breaking open the door,
and using the right password. The idiots had tried a guess: Sunitha123. They
had learned quickly that they could try guessing the password only two more
times.
Shekhar’s office
received a parcel the next morning. Shokie’s team managed to trace the delivery
boy. That only led to a chain of delivery boys and a waste of time. The first
one had collected the parcel from his courier office. The office did not have
CCTV and the staff only remembered “a normal person, medium height, not fair
not dark, wearing spectacles, sporting beard and moustache”.
The parcel had one
item: a well-preserved severed little finger or pinkie of a lady’s left hand.
xxx
Shekhar sat in the
living room at Land’s End, shocked, eyes distant. He had not said much
since the abduction, hardly eaten anything or slept either. He managed to
mumble, “That has the fingerprint to open her laptop.”
Sunitha had taken her
smartphone but not the laptop. With that too, the tech team had discovered quickly
that there was no way to enter the laptop without the relevant fingerprint.
They had asked Shokie if they should send it to more specialized teams. Shokie had
told them not to bother. She knew that Sunitha must have made sure her privacy
could not be breached easily. The police had used all the fingerprints they
could find in and outside the house and even in the couple’s cars. It was just
a little surprising when they did not find the print of the pinkie of the left
hand.
Sunitha had not set up
any other barriers within the laptop, even her mail account was open. Shokie
wondered if that was a lapse or by intention on Sunitha’s part. If people were
ready to chop fingers, they would have the means to extract passwords too.
The first video arrived
that night, around nine, as an attachment in a draft mail in Sunitha’s inbox.
Sunitha was alive. She
was tied to a chair, blindfolded and gagged. The left hand was bandaged. She
wore nothing but torn stained panties. Her face was swollen on one side, there
were scratch marks on her breasts and thighs. She was in a nondescript room
with plastic or tarpaulin on the floor and walls.
Shekhar moaned, he then
sat mute, shattered, like a man who could not comprehend anything. Someone
tried to make him sip water. He ran to a toilet and retched violently.
The video
self-destructed after one minute.
Shokie cursed herself
for not capturing that video on her smartphone or on some camera. She took out
her anger on her subordinates. They had been with her in worse crimes with
worse results before but they had never seen this Shokie. She seemed to be sure
the case would end in disaster, from beginning till end. She still had the wits
to investigate but something had broken within. They had seen such people
before, people whose will to fight or survive just vanished after a tremendous
loss or pain, people who felt totally responsible for a misfortune or death.
For a long while,
Shokie stood by one of the windows staring at the darkness around the cliff
top. Then, she sat down and wrote all she could recollect of the video. She
told her team members to do the same independently. Her writing was not steady,
especially when she wrote about Sunitha. She could hardly read what she wrote.
One detail stuck out, though. Was there the sound of something dripping
intermittently? She asked her colleagues if they had heard that. They had not
noticed.
They thought that that
was all there was to that night.
xxx
Hell broke loose during
the night.
The local media had
already started to crucify Shokie. They even insinuated that she had been lax
with the case “because of her track record with Shekhar”. On TV debates, politicians
of all fronts agreed that the case should be handed over to “someone better”.
Worse, the epidemic
started. Similar abductions were reported across the country, in tier two and tier
three cities. The abducted were both men and women, not rich not poor, not
famous but reasonably well-known in their small cities. In two days, there were
thirty-seven cases. And, the whole country was beginning to panic. Who next?
The media did not get
to know about the video. Shokie decided to keep that under wraps as long as
possible. She asked her boss to give her some more time. Forty-eight hours, he
replied. She silently groaned at the cliché. Her boss informed her a little
later that “a team from Centre” would be in touch soon.
The media pointed out
an obvious fact. The abductors had not contacted them.
“I too find that
strange,” Antony said the morning after the video arrived.
They were still at Land’s
End. Shokie had decided to use that as the centre of operations.
Antony continued, “Why
aren’t they seeking publicity…for whatever cause…or raising some demand?”
“They are nuts,”
Shajeeb said.
Shekhar, tired and
weak, mumbled, “The masters of propaganda…or the masses…who will lead…”
“What…?” Antony asked.
“I meant…” Shekhar
looked confused. He was still skipping meals and sleep. “Maybe…oh, I don’t
know…” he threw his head back in anguish.
Shokie handed him a
glass of water.
“I think I asked you
this before…” she said, “Do you have any idea about the password to enter
Sunitha’s office?”
Shekhar shook his head.
Shokie went and stood
by the door of Sunitha’s office, stared at the password pad. She smiled wryly,
thinking of the books and movies in which passwords were guessed by amateurs
and tech wizards. Or, discovered via prints on the pad.
“Girl, be kind to sister.”
xxx
Shokie received a call
from “the team from Centre” before noon. The team leaders were Rao (North) and
Kulkarni (Rest of India). Contrary to her expectations, they did not want her
removed from the case. They informed her that they reported to the Home
Minister and the NSA, and that there was tremendous pressure to get the
situation under control. They also admitted that that they were clueless at the
moment and appreciated the fact that Shokie had been with the case right from
the start and could be the only person who had some idea or instinct to open up
the case.
Shokie briefed them
about nearly everything. She told them that Shekhar was the only suspect at the
moment. They wanted to grab him and use the third degree. She said that might
not only be futile, it might endanger the abducted. She added that she expected
lots of fatalities.
They asked her if she
had any idea what it was all about. She told them she had no idea whatsoever.
She told them that Sunitha could have had her doubts.
She talked to them
every day the next three days. They told her that people were really scared.
They also mentioned a weird phenomenon. Even though there was an unofficial
blackout of news on the abductions, the information seemed to be spreading far
and wide. Even more strangely, people were not just avoiding news channels
altogether, they were even staying away from all political and social discussions,
even on social media. And, they were especially staying away from all
contentious issues. It was as if the public either wanted to remain below the
radar of the abductors or they were trying to be good in every way.
They told Shokie that the
people in power were very disturbed with the developments, wanted quick results
and had promised all available resources. They asked her if she had any
suggestions.
Shokie told them to
keep commando teams ready in every city where abductions had taken place. If and
when they got a break, they would have to move fast at the same time at all
places to minimize the risk of executions. They asked her if Sunitha could
still be alive. She told them that that was most unlikely.
Three nights after the
first video, around midnight, they received the second video. They were at Land’s
End. Shekhar sat with them. It was even more horrific than the first.
Sunitha had clearly
been abused a lot more. Like before, she was blindfolded, gagged and bound. Her
body jerked involuntarily and also went limp at times. She could be feverish.
The abductor could not be seen but a machete was visible on screen. When it was
placed against Sunitha’s neck, Shekhar fainted. Sunitha twisted in the seat,
away from the machete, her back bowed, her rear raised, she tried to turn
towards the person holding the machete. She was begging for her life, the
posture indicated that she was offering to continue as a sexual slave.
The video ended then
and disintegrated.
xxx
Shokie moved away from
the others. Shajeeb left with Shekhar in an ambulance. Antony had recorded the
video on camera and gave it to Shokie. She took that and moved towards
Sunitha’s office.
Shokie leaned her head
against the door, the image of the frightened abused Sunitha flashed in front.
Shokie clenched her fists and took deep breaths.
She forced herself to
watch the video again. And again.
Something about
Sunitha’s fits or convulsions caught her attention. Jerk jerk jerk limp limp
limp jerk jerk jerk. She opened her notes of the first video. The dripping in
the background. She tried to remember. What was dripping? She banged her head
against the door. Of course, it was Sunitha’s blood from the injured left hand falling
on plastic or tarpaulin. What was strange about the dripping? It was
intermittent. Drops in quick succession and then at longer intervals and then
again quickly. She watched the second video again.
The poor girl was
trying to send a SOS in Morse code, she realized.
Shokie cursed herself,
more liberally this time. She had been too affected by the abduction and played
into the hands of the abductors for this long, she told herself.
Go back to square
one…why did Sunitha choose me, Shokie muttered. She recollected their
discussions, searching for some clue Sunitha must have left.
“…what if you are
inside immobilized and we want to rescue you.”
“I guess I will send SOS to Shokie with triple
x at the end.”
Should she include SOS
or try just her name, she thought; surely, Sunitha would not keep just a name.
Shokie entered on the
password pad: SOStoShokiexxx.
It reported: you have
one try left.
“With numerals and
special characters, I presume…”
“Of course.”
“Why did you choose
me?”
“Your name adds up to
13.”
Shokie tried again:
S0S2Sh0k13***.
The door clicked open.
She silently thanked Sunitha, entered the office and closed the door. The
workstation had also turned on and there was a hum from next door.
She looked at the
screen of the workstation. It said: Background job in progress. Do not switch
off till it is over.
Shokie waited.
Twelve minutes later,
the printer churned out pages. Once that was done, the machines went into
shutdown mode.
The silence was eerie.
Shokie was disappointed when she looked at the printout, ‘Hedging & Risk
Management Across Sectors’. It looked like one big fat thesis: 733 pages long,
with synopsis, introduction, theory, data, results dense with charts, and photos
of teams and management.
Shokie read the first
line of the synopsis: Here, we will explore a method to accurately determine
the firm’s exposure to a corporate entity, across all asset classes and
products, in every market across the globe; and, an effective hedge to manage
risk.
She leaned back in
Sunitha’s wooden seat, feeling the sturdy support. She looked around the
office, at the neatly arranged books and disks on the shelves. It would take
days to go through all that.
She opened the printout
in front of her once again. She flipped through the pages one by one.
On page 73, there were
two photos: one of the Risk Management team Sunitha worked with, a foreign team
in suits; and, the other photo was of three men in casual dress.
There were seventeen
such photos of different men and women fitted in with photos of various teams
in the bank. Shokie did not recognize any of them. In one, taken at night somewhere
outside, there was a silhouette of a man’s back at one edge of the photo.
Shokie thought it could be Shekhar.
She went through the
report again, skimming through the sections.
There were paragraphs
that did not fit in.
On page 43, "I can
understand it when old goofies follow diktat from higher powers and stick to
party lines. That's the effect of the insecurity of mortality and the years of
easy subservient life. But, how can the young choose to be silent on issues
citing ideology, book or love of place or people? That's the worst scum."
There were more of such
passages, long and brief, with similar conviction and incoherence.
On page 264, “Isn’t it
a common belief that every ruler has to control media to rule the masses?
Remember the pandemic. When the government wanted everyone locked up, the news
everywhere blared about the deadly virus. When they wanted everyone to live or
die with the virus, the news was restricted to the minimum, and the reports
said that the virus was not all that deadly. That works most often. But what
works more effectively with people like you and me, who have a trust deficit when
it involves the government and the media? Word of mouth information. Consider
these abductions. Each one of these abductions will create fear, each one an
unimaginable nightmare. Even if the government and the media never reveal
anything, that news will spread. The abducted will be someone like us. People
like you and me will hear about it in their social circle. Tomorrow, your wife
will wonder if you or herself or your kids could be the next one to be
abducted. Can that fear be neutralized even when the abductions are stopped?
With each passing day, the fear will grow and spread. With the pandemic, we tried
wearing a mask or keeping social distance or observing better hygiene. With
this epidemic of abductions, what do we do? There will be hope for a miracle.
How long before this too is accepted as something to live with? How long will people
like us pray? How long before they curse their old gods? As the fear grows, the
next question in their minds will be: what have we done to deserve these
abductions? Should we change ourselves? Should we put back into the bottle the
genie of religion or communal hatred or distrust based on social inequality?
Should we be better human beings? That is the power of gods, to rule using
haphazard disasters along with the fear and the ignorance of the faithful, to
make people kneel before new fears, to make them accept new rules. We will
create that new god to change this world. No propaganda artist can compete with
that. They can help to spread it but they cannot create such a new religion.
Especially with people like you and me. That is the lot we will target. They
are the ones with an opinion, the armchair philosophers, not the poor ready to
revere a god if made to hop through loops, not the rich safeguarding their
interests, we will target the middle who control, who rarely change, who with
their beliefs and morality preserve a rotten system, who cares for their own
self-preservation and nothing else, those who sup with the devil, the religious
letting loose demons, the people signing off good or bad, never affected but
still deciding. Just as they decide the market, they decide for the majority,
untouched by riots or genocides, scratching each other’s back, settling kids
abroad, crying hoarse patriotic verse. For this cause, we will even have to
sacrifice what we love. Think of it as a malignant tumour. We will target that
tumour: people like you and me.”
Sunitha must have
digitized the photos and the manifesto, if one could call it that. She must
have scattered that with financial data, impossible to retrieve without some
program she ran on her machines. She must have wanted to hide it till the right
person saw it, knowing that it would be destroyed otherwise.
Just another confusing
irritating badly written Ayn Rand kind of rant, Shokie thought of the
manifesto. She was about to close it when one line caught her eye.
On page 527, “In every
revolution recorded in history, the masters of propaganda have led the masses.
This time, the masses will lead the masters, with fear and doubt, scared to
die.”
She could almost hear
Shekhar saying snatches of those words again. It was not evidence that would
hold in any court of law but she felt relieved to have something other than
doubt to suspect Shekhar. Tying him to the case would be another matter, she
knew. Shokie slipped the report into her backpack.
She stepped out of the
office and closed the door. She tried the password once again. It said: you
have two tries left.
Shokie smiled sadly.
xxx
Shokie had a few hours
before her next morning meeting with Rao and Kulkarni.
She and her team went
back to her office, after removing all their stuff at Land’s End. Shekhar
had been admitted in hospital, and was on saline drip and other fluids. Even
though it was the middle of the night, she called and informed Shekhar that
they had been removed from the case and that a team from Centre had taken over.
Shekhar requested her to keep looking for Sunitha.
Back in office, Shokie’s
team went through the photos in the report.
Shokie read another
part of the manifesto.
“How will you find
people like you and me? I will step out of my car with my trolley bag, back
home after the latest business trip, greet everyone in my apartment block just
like every other day. I will enter my apartment, take the bag to a room fitted
with plastic on floor and walls, and unpack my bag with the abducted one,
drugged or unconscious. How will you find me?”
They focused on the
photo with the silhouette. They agreed that the silhouette could be Shekhar
only with a wild stretch of the imagination.
“Does not help, I know,
but what’s Sunitha doing with all this?” Shajeeb asked.
“She must have sensed
something,” Shokie shrugged.
“Or, she came across
this on someone’s laptop or phone,” Antony suggested, “isn’t she good with
computers? Maybe, she hacked into some account or machine.”
“Could be…” his boss
said, “now, that source must be long gone…like Sunitha.”
“Ma’am…” Shajeeb said a
while later.
“Hmmm…” Her forehead
was on edge of the table, eyes closed.
“We will find her.”
xxx
“Let’s go back to every
material we have on Shekar, newspaper reports, casefiles…” Shokie said.
Three and a half hours
later, close to dawn, Antony gave them the break they desperately needed. It
was a newspaper report on a conference in the city. A photo of the people on
stage had Shekhar sitting to the right of the chief guest and to the extreme
left, there was one of the men in the photo with the silhouette. He was a top
executive of an IT firm in the city, a man originally from the North, settled
in the State for many years.
Two hours later, after
searching for material on this new suspect, they found one more face in the
photo. A doctor in the city.
They were all like
Shekhar, around the same age, well-known in the city, well-respected, “people
like you and me”.
The team gathered every
scrap of information with regard to the three suspects including Shekhar. They
got details of family, assets, primary residence, other properties and
apartments, mobile numbers, recent travel history.
xxx
At eight, Shokie shared
with Rao and Kulkarni what her team had discovered. She told them that she had
not made any move because she thought they should collect as much information
about others too, but as soon as possible, and without a leak of what they were
up to.
They agreed to use
every reliable member in their organizations. They had access to large
databases and technology to handle biometrics and facial recognition. Shokie
thought to herself how Sunitha and her pet would have enjoyed the data mining.
The men in the
seventeen photos were traced before noon. And just like what Shokie’s team had
done earlier, every relevant bit of information was gathered.
Around dusk, they
decided that it was time to act. The information they had was not exact or
complete but the abducted had little time left to live.
Shokie and her team did
not participate in the final swoop on all properties. Sixty abducted ones were
discovered alive. More than twenty were dead, the actual number could be more. As
Shokie had guessed, the abducted were found bound and gagged in apartments
belonging to the suspects, mostly secondary residences that were temporarily
vacant.
Sunitha was found,
barely alive, and admitted in hospital. She was classified as most valuable
witness and was to be given 24x7 VVIP security.
Shokie informed Shekhar
of the news. There was still no evidence of his involvement.
Shokie went along with
Shekhar to meet the doctors looking after Sunitha. They were told that Sunitha
had suffered a lot and it is a miracle she survived. She is on heavy
painkillers, barely conscious, she cannot have kids again, parts of her were
savaged and beyond repair, they added.
Shekhar and Shokie went
to Sunitha’s hospital room together. Shajeeb and Antony were on security duty
outside, waiting to hand over to Central forces. They all stood by the door.
Shekhar broke down when he saw Sunitha’s state, turned and moved away from the
room and wept leaning against a wall. Shokie felt weak too.
One swollen eye barely
open followed her.
Shokie went to Sunitha,
held her, torn breast to torn breast.
“Remember the
footprint,” Shokie whispered softly in Sunitha’s ear.
She moved away from
Sunitha and walked out of the room.
They did not meet
again.
xxx
The case was from then
on handled exclusively by the team led by Rao and Kulkarni. Shokie and her team
became mute spectators, having been instructed not to have any contact with the
couple, especially Sunitha. With the high security shield around her, that
would have been impossible anyway. They did not want any type of contamination
of evidence or interrogation.
Shokie’s team was
interviewed first. Sunitha was still in too bad a shape. There was still no
ground for any search warrant against Shekhar till then.
Rao interviewed Sunitha
a week later, when she could speak a little. She had been nearly strangled to
death during the many hours of abuse.
Sunitha told the
investigators that she had been bound, blindfolded and gagged all the time,
even when abused. She could feel that she was in rooms with plastic on floor
and walls. She thought she had been shifted at least twice.
She remembered only one
detail. After she was abducted, before her torture began, she noticed one thing
in the first place she was taken to.
“There was a footprint
in the concrete,” Sunitha said, “like the one in the photograph at home.”
That was enough to
secure a search warrant. Shekhar’s ancestral property was searched. The
investigators found pieces of bloodied bangles on the grounds, close to the car
park, nearly lost in the mud and plants.
The investigators already
knew from Shokie’s interview that the last thing she had done before losing
consciousness during the abduction was to reach out for Sunitha’s hand. That
explained why Shokie’s fingerprints were on those bangles.
It was going to be a
long case. Shekhar was incarcerated without bail. Shokie was not sure if the
prosecution would manage to win the case. She stayed away from Sunitha knowing
that any contact would be used by Shekhar. He had not protested about their
brief moment together in the hospital, as yet. He might guess how those bloody broken
bangles reached his property. She would not be surprised even if Shekhar turned
tables and Sunitha was made out to be the mastermind. He was keeping all his
cards close to his chest.
