by UD Yasha
Chapter Fifty-One
There was a loud buzzing in my head. I could not hear what Jay was saying. I wanted to go away somewhere. Anywhere away from this crazy moment. Every time I thought about Natasha, a piercing pain ripped through my head.
‘Wait for a second,’ I said. ‘Hold the line. We need to tell you something.’
Dr. Pande asked Radha and Rahul to join us. I put Jay on hold and added Rathod to the call. I purposely did not call Atharva. How could I tell him his sister was harming her own daughter? Tears streamed down my face when I saw Radha and Rahul. Dr. Pande told the two of them, Rathod and Jay about Munchausen syndrome by proxy and how he thought Malini and Sumeira were harming their own daughters. Radha held Rahul and me tightly throughout.
‘We don’t know for sure,’ Radha said after Dr. Pande finished talking.
‘No, it’s true,’ Jay said. ‘I found some proof. I decrypted the video I was telling you about. I have sent it to you. Fair warning. It gets graphic.’
‘Is it about the mothers?’
‘Yes, but it gets more and more twisted the further you watch it. Don’t watch it around that girl you have with you’
Silence.
I knew I had to get back to my senses. I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing. I inhaled deeply. I opened my eyes. I needed to push myself one last time.
I said, ‘You said you found the address of the warehouse in the blueprint, right?’
‘That’s right. It was hidden in the pixels of the blueprint itself,’ Jay said.
‘Where is it?’
‘Outside Pune. Near Lonavala. I think it would take about an hour to get there.’
I could hear my hammering heart. ‘Do you know what it is?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Send me the address,’ I said, wondering how so much money was involved in all of this.
‘I just sent it,’ he said.
Just as I was about to hang up, Jay said, ‘One more thing.’
‘Yes, go ahead.’
‘Take care, Siya. The video is brutal. But it is important you watch it. You’ll get a lot of answers after watching it,’ he said. ‘Don’t hesitate to call me afterwards.’
Jay disconnected the call. Rathod was still on the line. My phone buzzed once again on the bed. I checked what it was. I had two emails from Jay. The first had the address of the warehouse. The second had the video. I was afraid to open it.
‘I have sent the video to both you and Rathod,’ Jay said.
‘Let’s watch it,’ I said.
Radha and Rahul clamoured around me. Dr. Pande looked over my shoulder. I opened my laptop on the bed and kept the phone next to it.
‘I’m playing it here as well,’ Rathod said.
Rahul leaned forward and clicked once to start the video.
A blank screen made way for a bright source of light. It was replaced by three lines of text that said: We are proud of you. We love you no matter what people say. There’s a place for everyone in this world. That’s why we are here for you.
The screen faded once again. A man wearing an expensive looking black two-piece suit emerged. He was about forty and lean. His hair was thinning and he had combed it across to make it appear more dense.
He said, ‘Welcome once again! This is episode number thirty in this very special series. Today, like in every episode, the method recommended by the highest bidder will be used by a mother to torture her own child right here in front of us. The winner of today’s episode bid four crore rupees. That’s a new record. We keep getting bigger and better.’
They were auctioning off the method by which they harmed their children. It took me a second to register it. My breath thickened.
The man in the suit paused for a beat and narrowed his eyes while continuing to look at the camera. His face broke into a wide smile.
He continued, ‘Let me tell you that it’s a very unique way. We’ve never seen or heard about anything like it before. The best part about it is the process itself. It comes with a bonus too. It puts your child to sleep. There’s only one disadvantage. It can only be used on babies above one and under two years of age. I wouldn’t spoil it for you. Let’s start watching without further ado.’
I cringed. Radha’s hand grabbed mine tightly.
The man’s image gave way to a different setting altogether. A mother entered the frame with her baby. She was holding him in her hands, rocking him from side to side.
A chilling realization hit me. This video had been shot on a smartphone. Probably the woman’s phone.
The woman smiled at the camera. She rocked the baby in her arms. The baby would have been about a year old. The woman exited the frame only to be back ten seconds later. This time she was carrying a bottle of toilet cleaner in one hand. She put her baby on the floor. She held the toilet cleaner and poured it over the baby’s pacifier. She made sure it was drenched with the toilet cleaner.
She kept the bottle of toilet cleaner on the ground. She held the pacifier in one hand and picked up the baby. He was sleeping soundly. She began rocking him again. Left and right, left and right. Suddenly, she stopped. She shook the baby hard till he started crying. She then put the pacifier in his mouth. He began sucking on it. Within a few seconds, he became quiet. The mother looked at the camera and smiled.
A chill ran up all over my body. I had never seen anything darker or colder.
The man who had given the introduction returned. He said, ‘Hello once again, friends! I hope you enjoyed watching that. It was arguably the best way to put your baby to sleep. Also, a word of advice. Make sure you dip the pacifier in the toilet cleaner, or any similar liquid of your choice, every five minutes. The toilet cleaner could cause damage to your baby’s esophagus if you keep doing this for a week. However, we don’t know what will happen if you do this for a month. We would love to hear from you if you have any idea about it. You know where to post your replies. I’ll see you again next week!
The screen went dark.
No one dared to move for the next minute.
‘What was that?’ Radha said finally, echoing our thoughts.
‘Someone paid four crores to see that kid getting tortured,’ I said.
‘And there’ll be a subscription fee to watch it over and over again as well,’ Rathod said.
All of us looked at each other. The energy in the room had been sucked out. My mind was flooded with questions and thoughts. One troubled me the most: how many more children were out there that were being harmed this way?
Breaking the silence, I said, ‘We now have the address of the warehouse. We need to go there.’
‘I’ll arrange for a SWAT team.’ Rathod said.
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘There was a reason Mule or Manohar did not go to the police even after they knew where this place was. There has to be a reason for that.’
‘I don’t know, Siya. But with an entire SWAT team, I don’t care how powerful these people are. We’ll take them down.’
‘What if assembling the SWAT team alerts them? They might burn down the operation,’ I said.
Energy suddenly started coursing through me. All the emotions I was feeling earlier had made way for unbridled anger. Who could be so powerful, I wondered. Natasha’s words came back to me. The man with the golden tooth.
Just then, I remembered something that maa had said to me. She had joked about it a few days back when she was looking at her iPad. How had I not made the connection before? Someone powerful. Manohar had kept saying it. The person running this was also pulling all the strings of the cops. I should have realized it then itself! His face flashed in my mind. I had seen it so many times on various billboards across Pune, especially during the recently concluded General Elections.
‘Rathod,’ I said. ‘We need to go there ourselves. I know who we’re dealing with. I know who’s at the helm of this operation. We can’t take the risk of going there with a SWAT team.’
‘Who is it?’ Rathod said.
‘
The Chief Minister of Maharashtra—Manoj Sarvate. He has a golden tooth cap. I don’t know where Natasha saw him. But right now, I remembered that maa had told me how she found it funny that news nowadays covered even the dental appointment of Maharashtra’s Chief Minister. I remember now that he had went for a root canal. Maa had told me about it as well. In many cases, dentists put a crown on the treated tooth for precaution.’
‘If you’re right, we have to be extremely careful’, Rathod said. ‘I still feel I can have people from my own patrol team. I trust them immensely.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘They have put their own lives in danger to save mine many, many times,’ Rathod said. ‘Also, I’ve been studying the blueprint ever since we found it at Mule’s house. I knew we would bust this place at some point. Even though I didn’t know what it was, I could figure out some details that will be useful when we go there now. Keeping that in mind, I’ve already discussed tactical points with them.’
‘Alright, let’s get them on board,’ I said.
Rahul got up from the bed and said, ‘Let’s get those bastards.’
At that moment, my phone buzzed on the bed. It was a message from Jay.
Cracked more data. Rucha Sinha and four other children are inside the same warehouse
Chapter Fifty-Two
Big raindrops pattered against the staircase window as all of us, including Atharva, walked downstairs. The pre-monsoon showers were finally here. I had not even realized it had been raining.
Maa was sitting with Natasha on the couch. Shama was next to them with a plate in her hand, feeding Natasha varan bhaat. Natasha’s face was expressionless. I took heart from not seeing her cry.
Maa whispered something in Natasha’s ear. Natasha tapped her leg once and then maa got up. She crossed to me in a determined gait.
‘What happened?’ she asked me.
I was not going to tell her about the whole Munchausen syndrome by proxy business yet. I still could not understand how mothers could abuse their own children like this and use the Dark Web to post videos of the abuse and buy medication that could kill their children. All of this while they were learning from each other by bragging about the different methods they used to slowly kill their children.
‘We’ve made a breakthrough,’ I said, measuring my words. ‘We need to go somewhere right now. We know where Rucha is being kept.’
Maa pursed her lips. I could make out from her face that she knew I was not telling her the complete story. But she was okay with it. She smiled and put a hand on my shoulder.
‘As I told you even when you took on this case, I’ll be okay. I’m proud of you. Please go and get that girl back,’ Maa said and pressed my shoulder.
I nodded once, unable to say anything. Her courage kept surprising me.
‘I love you, maa,’ I said and turned to leave me.
‘Siya,’ maa called out my name. ‘Please be safe.’
I hugged maa tightly and whispered in her ear, ‘We’ll be back soon.’
‘I’ll stay with her home,’ Dr. Pande said, stepping towards us.
I let go of maa and all of us went out. The rain had started thundering down. The sky lit up and roared. The pre-monsoon showers had come early. Shadow always stayed in a corner when there was thunder and when people used firecrackers during Diwali. He had an aversion to loud noises. However, this time, he sensed I was going out to do something important. He walked up to me quietly, rubbed his nose against my legs and let out a low wail. I stroked his head once.
I felt bad to not tell Atharva the truth about Malini or what was happening. Before stepping out, I asked everyone to keep what they know to themselves, and then went to fetch Atharva as we needed his skills with the gun. I still did not know how to tell him that his sister was essentially a monster. So, I only told him that Rucha was at the large warehouse, and that Jay found the address in Mule’s data.
I went back to the house to get two umbrellas. Atharva followed me inside. He pulled me to the side just as I turned to go out. He said, ‘I don’t care what’s happening. I just need to know that Rucha is alright. Everything else is irrelevant.’
I wished everything else was irrelevant. But knowing the truth about Malini was going to crush him. I said, ‘From what we know, she seems to be okay for now. But we need to move fast to get her back safely.’
We got into Rathod’s armoured car. We had four guns amongst the five of us. It was decided that once we reached the warehouse, Rahul would stay in the car and wait for us.
Rathod’s patrol team had split into two civilian SUVs. They were going to follow us. Jay had sent me the exact location of the warehouse. It was near Lonavala, a small hill station between Pune and Mumbai. We were silent for most of the trip. The rain kept hammering down on the windscreen, reducing our visibility, forcing Rathod to go slower. It got heavier as we moved away from the city.
Once we began ascending the ghat, Rathod called his team and went through with what he had learnt about the warehouse’s location and entry and exit points.
‘We don’t know much about the kind of security present inside,’ Rathod said. ‘However, we have the element of surprise on our side. It’s raining heavily as well and that will make it difficult for them to spot us when we approach the warehouse. I would personally have had one team patrol each of the four sides of the warehouse. Especially if an activity worth four crore rupees is going on inside. We’ll observe the warehouse for ten minutes to try and get an idea of the number of people they have and their moving pattern. We’ll take a call then.’
‘Noted, sir,’ two men said in unison across the line.
Rathod continued. ‘That being said, there are only two places where the people inside can escape to. The first is the town of Lonavala. For that, they will have to take the same road where Rahul would be waiting with our cars. Their second option is to get away from Lonavala. They would have to pass through a dense jungle for that. It wouldn’t have been a problem otherwise, but it’s been raining heavily for the past hour. The route will be dangerous. The soil would be slippery and water would be gushing down the slopes. Taking that route is like signing up for your death. So, we’ll secure the approach road.’
In less than five minutes, Rathod veered away from the highway and turned to enter Lonavala. We drove for a few more minutes, taking one turn after another. The rain became a shade lighter.
‘Look to your right, everyone,’ Radha said.
All of us turned and looked out the window. The clouds were ominous and spit thunder across the sky. But that was not why Radha has asked us to look out.
In the distance, down the hill, we could see the faint lights of the warehouse.
Chapter Fifty-Three
We could see the warehouse for a few seconds while we were descending the ghat.
It was about three kilometres to our left. But even from that far a distance, we could tell that it was massive. Its fence was lit at regular intervals by white lamps. It was not very tall but it covered a large area. It vanished amid the thick foliage when we took the next turn.
We drove for fifteen more minutes after descending the ghat and went deeper into the forest. We exited the highway and joined a town road. We turned again to join a smaller road. The dense forest towered on both sides. It was pitch black and it seemed to get darker the further we went. The warehouse was somewhere to our right. Rathod had planned to get off on the road and approach the warehouse on foot through the forest.
‘This is it,’ Radha said, looking up from her phone.
Rathod pulled over by the side of the road. The two SUVs carrying Rathod’s patrol team stopped behind us. We were still about a kilometer from the warehouse. But driving any closer to it was risky, especially as everything else around us was so still and dark. We stepped out into the cool night air and slid into on our bulletproof vests. At that moment, I was glad we had Rathod’s patrol team with us. If Chief Minister Sarvate was indeed involved, he would have this place und
er a tight siege.
The rain became lighter after we stepped out of the car.
‘We’ll split in two teams,’ Rathod told his men. ‘Team A, you need to go around to the back and enter from the South. Team B, I’m going to be with you. We’ll enter from the East side. Both teams will wait and observe the security provisions present at the warehouse. Remember, our first aim is to rescue the five children inside. If we succeed in doing that, our next aim will be to take whatever evidence we can get. The evidence can be computers, documents or even people. There’s a high chance the warehouse would not have any of the masterminds of the operation at this hour. Hence, taking personnel is our last priority. Whoever is inside now would be pawns who are acting at their masters’ commands. Let’s do this.’
Rathod turned to me, Radha and Atharva. ‘I want you all to stay away. It can get nasty inside. Stay put here.’
Atharva stepped forward. ‘Rucha is inside. I’m going in with you,’ he said.
Rathod looked at him intensely. ‘Alright, Atharva, you’re coming with us.’ He pointed at me. ‘You and Radha have to stay at least five hundred metres away from the warehouse. Got it?’ He paused. ‘Also, here,’ he said, pulling out something from his pocket. ‘Use this Bluetooth earpiece. I’ll contact you if we need anything. You would want your hands to be free.’
I nodded and held my Glock tighter. Radha and I watched the two patrol teams go in different directions and eventually merge into the dark night. I paired the Bluetooth earpiece with my phone and clipped it to my right ear. We walked through the forest in the direction of the warehouse and stopped when we reached a small clearing.
Suddenly, it started raining heavily. The piercing raindrops hampered our visibility. We could not see the other end of the clearing that was about fifty metres away. Dense shrubs carpeted the ground. Radha and I sat down against a tree trunk. The ground was moist. The air was cool. I could hear the drops of rain fall from the tall trees around us. Minutes ticked by but we heard nothing. We waited alone with the sound of our deep breaths and thudding hearts.
