by Fawaz Jaleel
“Did someone from home come to pick you up?” Sukumar probed.
“No. I didn’t tell them since I was a little scared after hearing about Piyali ma’am’s death. Dinesh and I feared that this had something to do with us briefing ma’am about our reports. So, we got really scared.”
“Dinesh went to his grandfather’s place. Didn’t he ask you to go with him?” Yohan asked.
“He did but his grandfather refused.”
“Did you ask him why?” Sukumar questioned.
“Yeah, he ... He said that his grandad didn’t want to risk anything since he wasn’t sure about how involved we were in this. Poor Dinesh tried, but his grandfather is a stubborn man.”
“Do you trust Dinesh?” Sukumar asked a direct question without sugarcoating it.
“Umm. Yeah. We have been friends forever. He really tried,” Priyanshu melted down a bit. His eyes were teary and showed signs of helplessness. He did trust his friend and didn’t want to believe otherwise. Seeing the guy get emotional, Yohan put his hand on his shoulder and gently patted him. “I am sure you two are good friends. Anyways, tell us what happened after you reached Delhi?”
“I was scared, tired, and sweating a lot. I bought a bottle of water and came outside to look for an auto.”
“Okay and?” Yohan probed further.
“A … and I remember looking for an auto. You know how in Delhi, the auto drivers ask for extra fares generally above the meter ... an ... and during night times, they ask for exorbitantly high rates?”
“Happens at a lot of places. But continue,” Sukumar added. Yohan rolled his eyes at Sukumar for trying to be extra protective about Delhi.
“Yeah, and they were asking 3 or 4 times the normal rate. Suddenly, an auto driver came and asked me where I wanted to go. I told him my destination and he said he is also going in that direction and I could pay him by the meter and share it with another passenger in the direction.”
“Why didn’t you take a cab?” Yohan asked.
“College student budget, sir. Plus, my house is in GTB Nagar which is around 6 kilometers from the station and a cab would have been expensive.”
Yohan continued the questioning. “Fair point. What happened after you took the auto?”
“So, he said that the auto was parked outside. Like there is a Durga temple outside the station and he said he parked it in a gulley there and came looking for a passenger.”
“Didn’t that sound suspicious?” Sukumar followed up.
“Yes, but when I asked him, he said that auto drivers have this area-wise segregation of stands which I know of and he had to keep his vehicle away from these local drivers. He sounded convincing.”
“Okay, and?” Sukumar continued.
“I walked with him into the gulley and it was dark. Then I remember being attacked from behind, probably one or two guys. They held me, stuffed a cloth in my mouth, and tied my eyes and also injected something into my hand. I don’t remember anything else apart from waking up sometimes in a dark room and then falling asleep until I woke up in the hospital yesterday.”
“Do you feel any sort of pain?” Yohan questioned.
“Nothing, sir. I just feel very tired. I think they just kept using chloroform or something.”
“No, Priyanshu, chloroform works only in the movies and it takes longer to sedate you. They used other drugs,” Yohan clarified.
“Do you remember anything about the place you were kept or the auto driver who took you?” Yohan was trying to get a break.
“No, sir. I really don’t. It is difficult.” Priyanshu started crying as he couldn't take it. Yohan stopped further questions. “You rest. We’ll come back later.”
“No, sir. I want to help. What happened to teacher saab, to Piyali ma’am … That’s not fair. I want to help.”
Yohan and Sukumar were impressed with the boy’s grit. Despite being in a state of unconsciousness for days, Priyanshu’s determination was commendable. His counterpart, Dinesh Singh, who didn’t have to go through all this seemed more fragile than him.
“That’s brave, Priyanshu. Let my colleague Sukumar brief you on what we heard from Dinesh and then you can tell us about your meeting with Piyali.”
Sukumar gave a quick recap of the information they had gathered from Dinesh about the Bashir Hashmi angle and the tutorial-school scam he was pulling.
“Anything that Dinesh missed out?” Sukumar checked.
“More or less, he has covered everything in my story. Except the fact that Bashir’s PA sent me a message asking us to shut down this story. I informed it to Ashraf sir the last time I met him.”
“Oh, did they contact or try to intimidate you guys after that?” Yohan enquired.
“Bashir and Sumit had problems with Ashraf sir, so they dealt with him mostly.”
“Wait! Sumit Rajput, the owner of Torque Tutorials, was also mentioned in your story?” Yohan clarified.
“Yes. But the focus was more on Bashir. We … I never got any messages or calls from him.”
“Okay. I need that story. Can you share it?” Yohan requested.
“I will mail it to you, sir,” Priyanshu said.
“Think, Priyanshu. Was there any pressure on you or on Ashraf from either of these owners? Anything unusual?” Yohan rechecked.
“Sir, as I said, Ashraf sir shielded us when he was alive. After his death, we were shocked and, in a few weeks, we decided to update Piyali ma’am thinking she would help us. I took Chirag sir’s number from Piyali ma’am and tried calling him too but he never responded.”
“Wait, you called Chirag? When?” This was an important lead. Yohan eagerly followed for one break.
“The next day after we met Piyali ma’ am. And two days later, she was found dead and then all this happened.”
“Do you know anything about Chirag and Ashraf’s visit to Siwan, Bhagalpur, etc.?” Sukumar plugged in their latest lead.
“No. They kept us out of it.”
“Think, Priyanshu. You guys were in that room with Chirag and Ashraf for 10-15 minutes. Anything that you heard? Dinesh said it was you who always called Ashraf. Anything that you can think of about Chirag,” Sukumar followed up.
“Um, unusual nothing. We would just WhatsApp updates and share news articles. That's about it,” the perturbed student replied.
“Nothing about Chirag felt odd? Was Ashraf behaving oddly with him around?” Yohan slipped in a question about their major suspect yet again.
“No. They had intense discussions but we never knew much … That day also it seemed like that only. But…”
“But what?” Sukumar now showed signs of desperation.
“That day after we had left and were on our way back to the hostel, I remember Ashraf sir sent me a message and immediately deleted it. He said it was not meant for me.”
“Why is that odd? What was the message?” Yohan asked.
“It was nothing. It read something like ‘I am not Ashraf … and the rest I don’t remember exactly ... because I saw it when I dropped down the notification bar and as soon as I clicked on it, it was deleted. Then he sent the clarification.”
Sukumar turned toward Yohan and asked, “Why would he send that on the day of his death to anyone?”
“Yeah, and he probably was with Chirag when he sent this. Follow up with the cyber team and see if you can find anything,” Yohan added. He was unable to decode anything from that and wondered why Ashraf would claim that he wasn’t himself. But the lack of the entire text also added to the confusion.
“Okay, Priyanshu. Tell us about your last interaction with Piyali,” Yohan continued to ask questions regarding the open aspects of the case.
“Umm. We met her and briefed her about what we had found and all our insights into the tutorial scam and the land rights issue that Dinesh worked on,” Priyanshu answered.
“Did you guys get any threats for working on that?” Sukumar probed.
“Not really and Dinesh was focusing on it and, of course, his grandfather made
all the arrangements,” the young man clarified.
“What did Piyali say she was going to do?” Yohan asked.
“She said she will speak to Ashraf saheb’s party members and let us know how we can proceed?” Priyanshu replied.
“Sukumar, did you find any calls from her phone to the party officials after these guys’ visited?” Yohan turned to Sukumar.
“There was a call or two. I need to check the call log and WhatsApp log to confirm,” Sukumar clarified.
“Do you have any idea why Chirag met Piyali the day before her death?” Yohan tried again.
“No idea, sir. I tried calling Piyali ma’am a day before her death to follow up but she didn't pick up,” Priyanshu replied.
“Yes. We saw your missed calls and WhatsApp messages to her phone,” Yohan confirmed.
“Yeah, she didn't respond and finally, I went to our telegram group and messaged her privately.”
“Telegram group?” Sukumar appeared confused.
“Yeah. Ashraf sir had a telegram group with students from our college who volunteered for his party. He created it to share those heavy files and long videos from rallies or other party activities. Piyali ma’am was also a group admin and so I went to that group and privately messaged her but got no reply.” Priyanshu added a new piece of information.
“Yeah, I am aware of the app. But we didn’t see it on Piyali’s phone. Sukumar, get Ila to check the phone from the recovered items box,” Yohan gave directions.
“No, no, sir. I remember when we met ma’am at her house also, she received telegram notifications and replied to them using her iPad.”
“Wait? iPad?” Sukumar looked at Yohan with a confused look. He opened his phone and fetched the document with the list of items recovered from the crime scene. It had Piyali’s phone, her watch, purse, handbag with accessories, and a water bottle. There was no iPad mentioned in the list.
“Sukumar, call Piyali’s father right now and ask him if his daughter’s iPad is in the house. Right now, immediately.” Yohan appeared less calm and more restless now. Piyali’s iPad was definitely not recovered from the scene of death, even after multiple visits. He impatiently waited for Sukumar to get back with an answer. Yohan didn’t ask any further questions to Priyanshu and instead indulged in small talk while staring at the door. In five minutes, Sukumar re-entered the room after the phone call.
“Sir. Spoke to him. He said that she always carried it with her and it's not in the house. He said he will check again but he is 100 percent sure it is not in the house,” Sukumar was quick to give his update.
“Of course. Since the police did not return the recovered items due to the ongoing investigation, her father wouldn’t know it is missing. He would have assumed it is with the police,” Yohan thought out loudly. He knew that this piece of missing evidence is definitely a break. Without wasting much time, he picked up his phone and dialed Ila.
“Ila, there has been a botch up in the scene of crime. I need a warrant against CI Raj Pratap and team.”
Chapter 13
Absence Makes the Case Go Longer
“Raj Pratap better have a good explanation for this mishap or I am going to give one tight rap on his face.” Yohan was infuriated by the botch up of the local police. The two officers caught an evening flight to Patna and now were in a cab en route Begusarai. The meeting with Priyanshu had given a much-needed break in the Piyali angle, apart from insights into his abduction in Delhi. Yohan appointed a local CBI official to get a character sketch of the auto driver and pursue an investigation to nab Priyanshu’s kidnappers. The young man also shared his detailed story on the tutorial mafia featuring Bashir Hashmi and Sumit Rajput.
“I wonder if the iPad has any information. We should be able to preempt the kind of missing information in our current investigation that could be in her iPad. Bloody hell! I can’t believe we didn't catch this,” Yohan spoke to Sukumar and a bit to himself.
“Sir, I don’t think we should beat ourselves on this. It wasn’t in the list of items recovered when we got it and nobody told us. If not anything, it's finding the Priyanshu and Dinesh angle that led to this,” Sukumar offered his viewpoint.
“I know. I am just disgusted at the callous display of responsibility by the local team.” Yohan’s anger wasn’t misdirected.
“Yeah. I agree, plus we wouldn’t have even found it ... how the hell would we assume that Piyali was using Ashraf’s old number for this telegram account,” Sukumar replied.
“Oh, yes. Thankfully, Priyanshu found the number from the telegram group and we could trace it.” Yohan paused for a while and started biting his lips. His hands were folded in a namaste gesture and continuously rubbed his chin using the side of the index fingers. “This is where my suspicions lie. They abducted him, didn’t attack him, and even left his phone. It reeks of a setup.”
“I have the same feeling too, sir.” Sukumar agreed with him.
Yohan kept rubbing his folded hands toward his chin. He couldn’t wait for the next day to begin so that they could interrogate CI Raj Pratap. His investigation, so far, had been unsatisfactory at all levels. Yohan had already instructed Ila to keep a tab on the officer as he smelled the possibilities of an inside job or inside help in this case, especially after his explanation on Ashraf’s accident.
“Your meeting with Bashir’s PA also didn’t yield much, right?” Yohan asked.
Sukumar gave a quick brief on his visit. Bashir’s PA had outrightly rejected all claims of threatening Ashraf and Priyanshu. When quizzed about the messages, he said that his phone was stolen and he had registered a complaint at a local police station. Thanks to Bashir’s political connections, it wouldn’t be difficult to forge proof. The PA also informed that Bashir was currently out of town and would be back in a couple of days.
“Anyways, tomorrow is a big day. Let’s get hold of this inefficient cop,” Yohan remarked about Raj Pratap.
⁂⁂⁂
The media came in numbers and camped outside the CBI guesthouse. It was yet another day, yet another breaking news saga for them. This time their script asked them to paint a CBI–Bihar Police rivalry and season it with a “battle of egos” topping. The state government led by BNC, the primary opposition to the central government party, SDP made loud noises about the incident, so much so that the voters of the state would find this battle as an effort by SDP to malign the image of the local police and thereby invoke a feeling of “state pride” among the locals.
Media houses who sympathized with the national party painted the story as the frustration and arrogance of an inexperienced team that failed to deliver results. The opposition media claimed that the police was being used as a decoy to protect the culprits behind the death of Ashraf Zain.
Amid all the chaos, Piyali Sharma’s father whose daughter was a victim of endless media ordeal of character assassination tweeted:
Breaking News, They Said
Breaking Lies, They Claimed
Breaking Lives, They Never Feared.
Inside the new epicenter of media attention, Yohan and his team had converted their large conference room into an interrogation zone. CI Raj Pratap, devoid of his police uniform, sat on the living room couch, eagerly waiting to be called. His face had the same anxiety as a mischievous student who waited for the parent-teacher meeting in a school lobby.
When called upon, Raj Pratap slowly walked into the room. The man in his late 40s, was around 5’6, sporting an unhealthy waistline with a round and clean-shaven face, in his untucked shirt and khaki pants, opened the door to his interrogation zone. He saw a neatly dressed Yohan and Ila, with the former seating himself on the questioning table and Ila standing near the wall, sturdy without any support or backrest. Sukumar took the chair placed opposite the one for the arrested officer.
“You must have been on the other side plenty of times. Let’s give you a hang of something new,” Yohan said as Raj Pratap approached his chair. His face showcased the feelings of tension and incompeten
ce competing to overpower each other.
“Raj, we are both officers of the law and don’t want to harass or wrongly accuse you of anything. But we had identified some loose ends and we want you to fill in for us,” Yohan had a beautiful ability to keep his prejudices aside and give an unbiased mind to the suspects in front of him.
“Rajji, tell us what happened at Piyali's crime scene?” Sukumar began the interrogation.
“Me, Parekh, my head constable, and Mukesh, my driver, went to the scene. We called the forensics team on the way,” Raj Pratap started painting a picture of the day.
“No, no. You also called a few more people. We did circle in a few numbers from your call log on that day, Raj.” Ila had done her homework and was prepared since she spent a day investigating the man while her team members were in Delhi.
“I called the SP sir after we reached the crime scene, ma’am,” Raj Pratap clarified.
“I know that. I am talking about your brother-in-law in Cee News. You gave him an exclusive and, of course, the rest of the media followed. Loved the attention that day, I presume,” Ila started revealing her findings.
“Well. Umm. That madam ... I … I was just keeping him informed,” Raj stuttered.
Yohan wasn’t pleased with Ila’s use of words particularly regarding the attention-seeking aspect and he genuinely wanted to give the fellow officer a fair chance to speak. He looked at Ila and used his left hand to indicate to her to tone it down.
“Okay, Raj. Tell us what all you recovered from the scene of crime?” Yohan asked calmly.
“Sir, the things mentioned in the list. Her phone, hand bag, and other things,” Raj Pratap replied.
“What about her iPad? Why did you not mention that in the list?” Sukumar probed.
“Sir, we didn’t find her iPad. Ask Parekh, Mukesh, or Jeevan,” Raj Pratap pleaded desperately.
“We will ask them. But as the reporting officer…” Sukumar was about to complete his question when Ila interrupted him. “Wait a minute! Earlier you said you went with your head constable, Parekh, and driver, Mukesh. Who is Jeevan?”
“Umm, ma’am, he is a circle-inspector,” Raj Pratap responded.
