by UD Yasha
‘Thanks for that. The only way to right this is to find out who was behind the attack on Sonia. That might also lead us to the people responsible for Aniruddha Rajput’s disappearance. It’s all fucking connected,’ Rathod said and paused. ‘I need to see what happened downstairs. Are they letting us check the crime scene?’
‘I spoke to the ACP just before you came in. He told me the officers outside the premises at the time of the attack will be allowed to pursue this case. So, both of us will be investigating it.’
‘Where was the ACP?’
‘He was at his house when Sonia was shot. He was on his way when I spoke to him. He said he could not reach you.’
‘Even if I don’t tell him or anyone else that I had tasked Sonia with doing some other work, how am I going to explain the other things? They’ll find out that Sonia called me just after being shot. They’ll also know that I was the one who issued the code red by speaking to the trainee in the lab.’
‘Just tell them she called you regarding the triple homicide. You were getting worked up about it and had asked for a status report at the end of the night.’
Rathod shook his head. ‘Let’s go to the basement.’
The two of them walked down to the basement. The CID forensics department was eerily quiet. It had become a crime scene. Yellow tapes had been plastered all over the place. Surprisingly, apart from them, there were just two other people.
A young trainee named Kriti Patil was one of them. She appeared to be calm. She walked up to Rathod and Bhalerao on seeing them. She realized they were wondering where the rest of the people were. ‘The staff that was present when Dr. Sonia was shot has been taken upstairs. Five from the forensic staff are operating Dr. Sonia. Kaushik Dabri is with them.’
Rathod was glad that his instructions had been followed so fast. He made a mental note to speak to Kaushik Dabri about it. Even Dabri was a suspect. Everyone was. But every floor of the CID building had special access cards that had to be punched in each time any officer entered or exited it.
‘Has the access card system been tampered?’ Rathod asked.
‘All systems at the forensics department, including the access card setup and CCTV cameras, were disabled remotely,’ Kriti said.
‘And what’s the status of Dr. Sonia’s operation?’
‘They’re trying to stop the blood flow. The ambulance and two other surgeons who specialize in bullet related trauma have just arrived. They will gauge her condition and decide if she can take the ride to another hospital. Simultaneously, they are also preparing for a situation where she can’t be moved. Another ambulance is already on its way here with more medical equipment, medicines and doctors.’
‘Give us the overalls. We'd like to see her office,’ Rathod said.
‘Of course,’ Kirti said and got two pairs of white plastic overalls for Rathod and Bhalerao.
They put it on and ducked under a yellow tape to enter the hallway that led to Sonia’s office.
The first thing they saw was the large pool of blood next to Sonia’s table. It was smudged in places as Sonia had been pulled out of it. Rathod guessed the shooter would have hit her on entering the office. There was no chance for Sonia to get away or alert anyone. A silencer had to be used as no one knew she was shot until he had called.
Rathod looked at the two examination tables next to her desk. One had a microscope. It told Rathod that she had looked at the bullets. The other table had nothing on it. His eyes searched for the bullets. But he could not spot them.
‘You said you gave her an anonymous letter, right?’ Bhalerao asked.
‘Yes, it was in a brown envelope,’ Rathod said.
‘I can’t see it,’ Bhalerao said, stopping by every corner of the office.
‘The killer must have taken it. The bullets she examined are missing too,’ Rathod said. ‘I don’t know how they got to know.’
‘I think what you said upstairs made sense. The plan was not to kill her. Just observe her and then execute her if she finds something.’
‘Why not just take the bullets?’ Rathod said, but then he answered the question himself. ‘By taking the evidence and killing Sonia, they were closing any possibility of what Sonia found being admissible in court. The DFSS database would have the entry but without physical evidence and the Medical Examiner’s opinion, it was going to be a hard point to prove. The defence could claim evidence tampering.’
Rathod stopped by the microscope. He knew it recorded everything that was seen under its lens. He also knew that bullet striations were no longer examined by eyes alone. The computer had to certify that it was a match.
‘Even if the evidence has been taken, the machine still knows the truth,’ Rathod said, pointing at the microscope.
First, Rathod needed to know which bullets were a match. Using Sonia’s computer and her account as it was already open, he opened the DFSS database. Sonia had made two entries. The bullets from the triple homicide and the two bullets that they had found at Stan Mills. Lodged in the walls. The bullets from Stan Mills had been fired from the same gun that had been used in case number M-31222. The two were connected by the shooter. Rathod wanted to check what the case was as soon as possible. But first, he needed to handle some other stuff.
Rathod paused, thinking about how the recording from the microscope could be first retrieved and then secured. One person came to his mind. Jay Parikh, the computer whizz kid, whom Siya and he had met during their last case. With half the CID staff now being suspects in the murders, it would be possible to get an external consultant on board. Before working with him the last time around, Rathod had himself conducted a background check on Jay, so he knew Jay would pass the CID scrutiny test.
As Rathod picked up his phone to call Siya, his phone began ringing in his hand. It was an unknown number. His eyes narrowed as he answered the call.
‘Is this Senior Inspector Kapil Rathod from the CID?’ a man said.
‘This is him. Who is this?’ Rathod said, uttering each word distinctly.
‘I am Gandhar Deshpande. I am a researcher at the Central Forensic Science Laboratory in Pune. I was tasked by Dr. Sonia Joshi earlier in the day to analyse some gunshot residue. She gave me your number in case I couldn’t reach her. I have been trying her number for the past fifteen minutes but I cannot get through. That’s why I called you.’
Rathod was suspicious but at the same time alert. He knew that if this was indeed someone who was helping Sonia, then even they were in danger if they had found something. Rathod said, ‘Where are you now?’
‘I am the CFS Lab.’
Rathod ran to the admin area of the forensics lab. He wanted to make sure Gandhar was who he was claiming to be. Bhalerao connected the dots and helped Rathod setting up the call tracking software and handing him a wire to connect his phone to it. All floors of the CID had the tracing software ready to get going in a matter of seconds.
‘When did Dr. Sonia contact you?’ Rathod asked to stall as the software traced the call.
‘She called me earlier in the evening today. I sent someone to get the samples. Then she told me how I should go about testing it. The required equipment wasn’t available at CID so she wanted to use something here at CFS,’ Gandhar said and paused. ‘I’m finding this odd. Is everything alright?’
Rathod took a deep breath as the software showed the location of the caller as the CFS Lab in Kharadi, a place forty minutes from the CID office. There was no way he was going to reach there quick enough if there was a threat to Gandhar’s life.
Rathod said, ‘Everything is not okay. Gandhar, listen to me carefully. Don’t panic but there’s a high chance that your life could be in danger. I am alerting someone I know at the Kharadi Police Station. Two officers will come to take you. Only go with them and no one else. Ask them for IDs.’
Bhalerao knew Rathod was referring to a member of his SWAT team. He lived a few minutes from Kharadi and was the closest to the CFS amongst their trusted team. He pulled out hi
s phone, beckoned to Rathod if he should make the call. Rathod nodded and saw Bhalerao walk away as he put the phone to his ear.
‘What’s going on?’ Gandhar said, confused and afraid.
Rathod said, ‘Someone just shot Dr. Sonia because of what she discovered. They don’t want anyone to know. If she had brought you in the loop too, then there’s a high chance that they will try to hurt you as well.’
‘In that case, I’ll tell you what I found,’ Gandhar said, his voice trembling now.
As Rathod heard what Gandhar had to say, his eyes were almost going to pop out. What Gandhar had found was invaluable. It changed everything that had happened since morning. And it was also worth killing for.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I took an auto-rickshaw back home. I was jaded by what had happened to Dr. Sonia. I didn’t know her well, but I knew she was a capable woman. More than anything else, she was a good woman who didn’t deserve to go away so young. I kept checking my phone to see if there was any update from Rathod about her.
Maa was already fast asleep by the time I got home. Radha, Rahul and I sat in the living room without saying anything. As Sonia was conducting the tests for us, she was a part of our team. An attack on her was an attack on us. There was a bleak and depressing silence that none of us wanted to break.
After a while, I thought about how we were on the right path. Sonia would not have been shot otherwise. She had found something relevant and useful. Something that had the potential to expose some powerful people. The only way to stop the truth from coming out was to silence her forever. The bullet was a match.
I looked at my phone again just as it started buzzing in my hand. It was Rathod.
‘Are you home?’ he said, sounding urgent.
‘Yes, I got back a while ago,’ I said. ‘How’s Sonia?’
‘Still in surgery.’
Silence.
‘I’m coming over right now,’ Rathod said. ‘Secure yourself. Make sure all the doors and windows are locked. I think everyone who’s involved in this case is now in danger. Don’t let anyone in. I just found something that changes the way we look at this case. It was again Sonia’s work. She’s a gem. I’ll reach in ten minutes.’
I asked Rahul to check the doors and windows upstairs while Radha and I made sure everything was in order on the ground floor. Shadow sensed something was up so he followed me around. Once everything was locked up, I paced the living room floor to try to keep my mind occupied. The last time we had locked down the house was when Kishore Zakkal was back in our lives. It had sent us into a spiral of constant fear, especially as Zakkal was then trying to personally target me and Radha.
The silence was broken when we heard the gate outside. Shadow leapt towards the door, probably thinking that he needed to guard us in some way. I went to the door and opened it slightly to check who it was.
Relief spread its wings when I saw Rathod. He climbed up the stairs and walked in. Shadow jumped on him once and then sat quietly on the floor.
‘What happened?’ I said as soon as I locked the door.
Rathod looked at me and took a deep breath. He said, ‘Remember I had told you that Dr. Rastogi had found gunshot residue on Jane Doe’s hands?’
I nodded. ‘Yes, that hinted that she discharged a firearm sometime before dying.’
Rathod said, ‘That’s right. Sonia decided to see if the same GSR was present in any of the other bullets we have found at both crime scenes. Turns out it was.’
A chill shot up my spine.
Rathod continued. ‘The GSR from the bullets we retrieved from the bullets in the bodies of Niyati and Malhar Jathar and John Doe matches the GSR found on Jane Doe’s hands.’
I knew what that meant. It really changed everything. I thought out loud, ‘That means Jane Doe was responsible for the triple homicide.’
‘She killed them between ten and twelve at night,’ Rathod said.
‘And then she called me at three o’clock,’ I said. ‘Was I a target too?’
Radha turned to me and said, ‘Your meeting with Komal revealed that Jane Doe was already shot by the time you got outside the Stan Mills factory after the call was cut.’
‘That means somebody else shot her,’ I said under my breath.
‘And that bullet in her body doesn’t match any previous crime,’ Rathod said. ‘But the bullet in the wall matches one that was used in case number M-31222.’
‘I’m trying to figure out what happened in the morning at Stan Mills,’ I said. ‘If the bullet that killed Jane Doe doesn’t match any, that means that she was shot by, let’s say Person A. But if the bullets that ended up getting lodged in the factory walls don’t match those in Jane Doe’s body but instead match a prior crime, that means there was a second gun.’’
Radha jumped in. ‘Which means there was another Person B.’
‘If that’s right, there were four people present in the morning at Stan Mills,’ I said.
Silence.
I couldn’t believe that Jane Doe was responsible for the triple homicide. We still didn’t know who she was. We also didn’t know if Niyati Jathar had operated on her to change Jane Doe’s looks. If she had conducted that surgery, this was even more twisted. The patient who changed the way she looked killing the doctor who made it possible. If that’s what had happened, then was Jane Doe scared that the doctor would reveal how she looked before? Finding Jane Doe’s identity became even more crucial now.
‘What’s case number M-31222?’ I said.
Rathod rummaged in his bag and pulled out a stack of papers and a pen drive and said, ‘I’ve got hard and soft copies.
Rahul stepped into the dining room and brought his laptop to the living room. He inserted the pen drive. Rathod and I referred to the hard copy while Radha and Rahul looked at the laptop.
I started reading the report. Here’s what I found.
Case number M-3122 was of the murder of Sheena Ahuja, a woman who worked at an accounting firm in Mumbai. She had been killed on 23rd November 2002. Her husband, Kabir Ahuja, was also murdered, but on 20th November 2002, three days before Sheena’s murder.
Like in a lot of Indian households, Kabir and Sheena stayed with Kabir’s parents in their house in Lower Parel in Mumbai. Kabir’s father Motilal Ahuja was a government civil servant at the time. His mother was a teacher. Kabir and Sheena had one three-year-old son at the time who was in the care of his grandparents. Kabir was a journalist with one of India’s leading newspapers called the Indian Times while Sheena was a financial analyst at a large multinational company.
Kabir was killed in Pune at their family farmhouse. Kabir had a habit of spending a couple of days alone every few months. That’s why his visit to the farmhouse was not suspicious. Sheena had been killed in a hotel in Andheri West in Mumbai. Sheena’s closest friends and family members didn’t know why she had checked into a hotel when she already had a house in Mumbai. According to her company, she had taken an indefinite leave of absence after her husband’s murder. So, she hadn’t gone to the hotel on company business. The Mumbai Police had also noted that the hotel was the kind that accepted cash payments and didn’t require the person checking in to show an ID card.
Sheena’s in-laws had gone on record to say that Sheena had been shocked by the sudden demise of her husband, along with the fact that he had been murdered. On the day Sheena was killed, they reported her missing when she didn’t show up for breakfast and her in-laws could not find her in her bedroom.
The hotel staff had seen Sheena check-in at noon the day before she was murdered. She had been reported missing at nine in the morning on the same day by her in-laws. They had last seen alive the night before.
At one in the afternoon on the next day, Sheena was found dead in her hotel room by the staff of the hotel. They had entered the room forcefully as Sheena had not checked out and it was past her time. The report stated that no one from the hotel staff had seen Sheena with anyone since the time she checked in.
&nbs
p; Sheena had been shot twice. Once in the head and the other time in her stomach. The same shooter was now active almost eighteen years later at Stan Mills. The connection and timing were bizarre and had no reasonable explanation.
Kabir was found dead in the study of his family farmhouse in Pune. The farmhouse was slightly outside the city but still fell within the jurisdiction of the Pune Police.
We quickly realized why the murder was jointly investigated by the Mumbai and Pune police together. The Pune Police was already investigating the murder of Sheena’s husband Kabir. As Sheena was murdered in Mumbai, the Mumbai Police had jurisdiction over the case. As there was a high chance that the two murders were connected, the police forces from the sister cities had decided to conduct a joint investigation.
To date, Sheena’s murder had remained unsolved. On the other hand, Kabir’s killer was caught, arrested and was now serving time in Yerwada Jail. He was a man named Mukund Dhar. A fingerprint was found at the farmhouse where Kabir was staying. It matched Dhar’s. At the same time, Dhar’s bloody clothes were found at his house with Kabir’s blood on it. Dhar had no alibi for the murder. The murder weapon had not been retrieved. The only missing piece in the investigation was Dhar’s motive. The report stated that a lot of cops believed Mukund was a gun for hire.
Dhar had known contacts with the underworld dons of Mumbai. A criminal informant had recognized Mukund as the person who was tasked with killing a businessman but the actual plan had never gone through. What the informant said was not admissible in court as it was classified as hearsay.
I got to see the way the scenario would have played out. The guy seemed guilty from all angles. Just the motive was missing. But then, the prime suspect was a suspected hitman. The police had not been able to find who had paid Dhar. Which was the key piece in the mystery because without knowing that, the real killer was still out in the open.
